


Dreams

by 3_141592653589793238462643383279502884



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst from both boys, Before Ep 08, Bisexual Lance (Voltron), Dreams and Nightmares, Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, Gay Keith (Voltron), How Do I Tag, I Don't Even Know, If it wasn't apparent, It's going to take awhile to get this ball rolling, M/M, Nightmares, Pre Season 3, Rating May Change, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Tags May Change, There will be fluff don't worry, Unregular Updates, Will have a happy ending, eventually fluff, i don't know where i'm going with this, it'll get there
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2018-05-07
Packaged: 2018-10-11 01:56:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 36,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10452390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3_141592653589793238462643383279502884/pseuds/3_141592653589793238462643383279502884
Summary: Keith thought he just got hurt. He thought that it was all over, that things were going to go back to normal after he got over these nightmares. God, was he wrong.______________________________________________________Or where Keith and Lance switch dreams/nightmares because I wanted them to.Also, I'm really bad at updating, but I'll try to put up a chapter on either Mondays or Tuesdays. (I'll try, no promises.)





	1. Vert

The Food Goo tasted different each time  
Sometimes it was as bitter as black coffee, but never had the benefits of caffeine that coffee had. Everyone missed coffee, it was something that they all had to quit cold turkey, since the Castle didn’t have any coffee beans, and neither Allura nor Coran knew what coffee was. Coran first believed that coffee was cough medicine, which all the Paladins told him no, it wasn’t, yet Coran still wasn’t convinced. Every time one of the Paladins complained that they wanted coffee, Coran brought out some blue Altean cough medicine. There were the rare and lucky trips they took to space malls that sold a beverage that somewhat resembled coffee. It tasted foul and made them all gag, but it had the same effects of coffee. They tried to order as much as the Barista had allowed them to take on the Castle. Yet, the “coffee” never lasted more than two months.  
There were also the times when the food goo tasted like actual vomit. No one, not even Shiro, was polite enough to even finish their plate.   
And then, there were times to be savored, like these.   
When the Food Goo was actually sweet.   
These were rare, maybe once every three month, occasions. The texture was always the same, kind of like Jello, but it actually tasted just as sweet as Jello. It was a beautiful moment when the goo actually tasted like this, everyone sighed into their first bite, in a blissful state of good tasting food. They let their taste take them over, sending them to a land of rolling hills with rainbows and sugar cubes.   
Which was why Keith was going to savor this batch of food goo.   
Lance and Hunk had already finished their serving, and now complaining that they couldn’t have seconds. Pidge was almost done with her serving. Shiro, Allura, and Coran were about half way done.  
But Keith-  
Keith had only taken three spoonfuls of the greenish slush.   
Keith usually had the ideology that food goo was always disgusting and to eat it as fast as possible to get it over with. But when he took that first bite and realized that this batch of food goo was amazing, he had to savor it. He took his time making sure each bit of food goo was completely out of his mouth and in his stomach before he even thought of going in for the next bite. He wanted his food to last as long as it could, and that was clearly pissing Lance off.  
Every time that Keith looked up at the table, Lance was shooting daggers at him and his plate of food goo. He could feel Lance’s gaze burning a hole in him, and shifted a little in his seat. Keith ignored him, or tried, and continued listening in to the conversation between Allura and Shiro.   
“-but I do believe that the Castle is finally ready to make another wormhole jump. The last one, as you know, had taken its tole on the Castle, but with all the repairs that we’ve done these past few days, I believe we are ready to continue our journey!”   
Allura either seemed terminally happy or all about business to Keith. Which, didn’t bug him. Her voice had a nice ring to it when she was happy. The Castle was her home, and when it was damaged, it almost seemed like she was damaged with it. When the hallways were clean and the systems were working, she had a happiness to her. The last wormhole jump didn’t actually damage the Castle’s systems, but it was a shaky one. The training center and the kitchen had been a wreck; Swords and training dummies all over the floor, broken plates and food goo all over the kitchen. They had agreed to clean up before they took another jump.  
“Good,” Shiro replied, “the sooner we get back on track the better. And with the training deck back to operational, I expect everyone to get back to training.”  
Shiro looked around the room, skipping over Keith. Shiro already knew that Keith already was back to training the second the training deck was finished. Keith had been grumply the whole time while the training was less than functional. Shiro had no need to worry about Keith at all. The glare was mostly focused on Lance and Hunk. Both were strong, especially Hunk, but both had a certain mindset about training; That it was stupid.   
“If we want to defeat the Galra,” Shiro continued, “we better be on our best game. I want you all to-”  
“Are you trying to taunt me, Keith?!”   
Everyone glanced at Lance, who was now standing up from his seat and gesturing wildly with his spoon at Keith’s plate.  
“Like, how slow do you need to eat? When did you, Keith Kogane, the Red Paladin, the guy who rushes into things blindly, the guy who assumes the worst out of people at first sight, get patient with food goo?”  
Keith rolled his eyes at Lance, and then took another spoonful of food goo. Keith chewed through his goo slower than before. He saw Lance’s eyes twitch before he directed his attention to Shiro.  
“Where is our next stop?”  
Everyone at the table ignored Lance and his outburst, and continued talking about actual important things.  
“Allura said that it should in about two days.” Shiro glanced at Allura, who nodded in agreement.   
“Yes, we are going to go to the outskirts of the Galra empire, to a planet that the Altean’s used to visit very often. I believe they will give us supplies. And their planet is under the threat of a Glara attack, so we may have to deal with the Galra as well.”   
Keith nodded. He could use the fight to get some stress out of his system. He glanced around the table. Lance was back in his seat now, but he just was staring at Keith’s plate. Keith took another bite of the goo, which snapped Lance’s attention back to Keith. Lance gave Keith a dirty look before asking a question.  
“So, will there be any ladies on this planet?”  
Everyone sighed and Pidge mumbled a “Classic Lance.” Allura, although seeming a little exasperated, answered his question.   
“Yes, Lance, there will be female’s there.” Lance grinned at that and leaned back in his chair a little. “However, I don’t think it is a very good idea to flirt with them.”  
“And why is that?”  
“Well, they mate for life.”  
“Well, look at that. I can find Mrs. Mcclain. I can bring home the bacon to her, read the space newspaper and talk about the Sudoku section with her, and be a happy married couple with her. Let the kids play outside until they break Mr. Brickson’s window. Scold them, and then watch them grow up. Help pay for their space college. You know. It’ll be great.”  
There were multiple groans and eye rolls at Lance’s fantasy with his wife. Allura and Coran just seemed confused. Allura mumbled “Sudoku?” to Shiro, who mumbled a “I’ll tell you later.”   
Keith crossed his arms and rolled his eyes. You’d think that you wouldn’t have time to think about these things when you’re busy saving the universe. However, this is Lance Mcclain. He’s never not flirting with anything that resembles a female. It, of course, bugged everyone, but especially Keith. Lance looked over at Keith, at his crossed arms, and then at his plate. Lance slowly grabbed his spoon to his right while keeping his eyes locked on Keith’s plate. Keith raised his eyebrows before he realized what Lance was about to do.  
“Lance, don’t you fucking dare-”  
Lance stood up and made a dive with his spoon for the plate and the contents on it. Keith stood up and grabbed Lance’s wrist and shoved his body in front of Lance’s so Lance was physically blocked from the plate. Lance shoved back, and was inching his spoon to the plate, centimeters from being able to scope a bit of the goo. Keith planted his feet into the ground and shoved back as hard as he could. Keith shoved an elbow into Lance’s midsection, which got a grunt out of Lance. They shoved back and forth for a few seconds. Lance placed his head of Keith’s shoulder in an effort to get closer to the plate. Keith blocked him, pulling at Lance’s wrist as hard as he could. That was his sweet food goo, not Lance’s, and Keith was not going to stand for that. That being said, the longer this game of tug-of-war went on, the more Keith realized how close they were.   
Keith was still in front of Lance, but Lance, in an effort to get as close to the plate as possible, had inched his way to Keith’s side, and his head was dangerously close to Keith’s. Close enough to feel Lance’s breath on his cheek. Keith flushed and tried to get away from him slightly, only for Lance to get closer. Their feet were a tangled mess on the floor, trying to get leverage on each other. Lance’s wrist was still in Keith’s hand, and that hand felt like it was on fire. No matter how uncomfortable Keith was getting, he was not about to let Lance get his food. But Lance was too close.   
“Enough, you two!”   
At Shiro’s words, Keith let go of Lance and quickly backed up a few paces. Lance fell face forward on the floor, which got a few laughs from Hunk and Pidge. Lance grunted and got up fast, then glared at Keith. Keith, returning the glare, stepped forward and took his plate into his hands, and quickly forced a spoonful of goo into his mouth. Chewing, he continued to glare at Lance.  
“Guys, look.” Shiro sighed, “ We all know you don’t like each other, but can you at least try to get along?”  
“Shiro is right.” Allura chimed in, “We are a team. We understand that you two have your differences, and may never be great friends, but this team won’t work if you two can’t get along!”   
“Will you two at least promise to try not to fight anymore?”  
“It’s not even my fault!” Keith said, “He’s the one that tried to steal my food!”  
“Maybe I wouldn’t have to steal your food if you didn’t eat so slow!” Lance retorted.  
“Well, if you didn’t eat so fast, than you would still have food! But no, you ate it like you’re a hippo!”   
“Well, you’re a hippo!”  
“That doesn’t even make any sense!”  
“GUYS!”  
They both looked at Shiro, who was holding the bridge of his nose like he had a headache.  
“Just, please. Workout whatever this is. Because this,” He gestured to both of them, “is getting on everyone’s last nerve.”   
The rest of the room was eerily quiet as they looked at both Keith and Lance and waited for their answer. Hunk seemed worried, Pidge looked amused, Coran looked confused, and Allura and Shiro looked stern. They were almost a carbon copy of each other.  
God, they were made for each other.   
“Fine, whatever.” Keith said. Lance made a sound that sounded like a “Hmmph.” Right after that sound escaped Lance’s throat, the red warning lights came on. Everyone snapped back to attention and hustled out towards the deck. Keith glanced down at his plate of food goo that was still in his hands, and sighed. He tilted his head up and scraped the goo into his mouth and hurried after the rest of the team. By the time Keith got to the deck, the rest of Team Voltron was already in their places. Keith sat down, and got a glance from Lance.  
“What, did you have to finish your precious food?” He said with a smirk.  
“Yes, and it tasted great.” Lance huffed at that and refocused his attention to Allura. Keith grinned to himself, and listened to Allura as well.   
“Paladins, I’m afraid we have been spotted by a Galra war ship. You will have to get to your Lions. We will defend the Castle from here. Hurry!” Just as she said that, The Castle rocked from a blow from the war ship. They rushed into their hangers, and changed into their armor. Keith could use this, could use the fight to work off some stress. Excitement flooded into his veins as he sat into the seat in his lion, and started her up.


	2. Noir

To Keith, flying had always been the best part of The Garrison.  
Keith didn’t care for the long lectures, or the homework, or the simulators for that matter. But when he was allowed to fly into space, which he only did twice since he was there for such a short time, he came to life. He felt safe to be in space, as weird as it sounds. Earth had always seemed unforgiving, cold, and lonely. You could use these same adjectives to describe space, but it was different. Space was peaceful and quiet. You could fly as fast as you wanted in space, go anywhere in space, and imagine anything in space. On Earth, Keith felt trapped. He couldn’t escape the fact that he was an orphan, or a dropout, or that his best friend was possibly dead up in space. When Keith got out of the atmosphere, he forgot all that. Keith felt at home when he got to go into space.  
So right after he was expelled from the Garrison, he did everything he could to get back into space.  
He knew Shiro was somewhere up there, lost in space. He knew he was still alive, he didn’t care what the Garrison said. Keith needed Shiro, and Keith had all the intentions to get him back. He looked at everything that could have gone wrong with the mission, deciding that pilot error wasn’t the case, he looked into every possibility that could have happened. He remembered distinctly thinking over the idea that Shiro had been abducted by aliens, but ultimately favored another theory. Around then, he started to feel this presence in his mind. A constant humming at the same tone, which somehow soothed him. Keith made it a mission to find where this humming was coming from, and to see if it was related to Shiro in the least. He spent that year exploring caves and with little to no sleep. He found the carvings of the ‘Blue Lion,’ but he couldn’t find where this lion was. Then, Shiro crash landed.  
And the rest is history.  
Keith felt the same rush as he always did when he flies the Red Lion. It felt right. She responded to him and trusted him, and he trusted her. Sometimes she would take over the controls from Keith, which Keith would often yell at her for, but she knew what was best. They danced with each other, avoiding deadly blast after deadly blast. Blasting apart Galra fighters, and helping his teammates out of situations. He expertly handle his lion, he was the best pilot on the team, and could dodge lasers on a dime. The Red Lion even seemed to come alive in the heat of battle. She roared with excitement, and was receptive to all of Keith’s handling. Keith felt the same as he did back in the Garrison when he first went up into space; Alive and dangerous.  
Lucky for the team, it had only been one Galra warship, but it did bring a pack of Galra Fighters along with it. Each lion was doing their own thing; Keith was flying head first into battles, Pidge was sneaking up from behind some of the fighters, Hunk was trying to find a way to defeat the Ion Cannon on the war ship, Lance was fighting fighters and helping Hunk, and Shiro was doing a little bit of everything.  
“It won’t work,” Hunk’s voice chimed in through the comms, “The cannon has a shield around it. We’ll have to disable it from the inside if we want to destroy the cannon.” There was a silence over the comms. No one really liked infiltrating a Galra ship, it was dangerous and creepy. The hallways were dark, the constant threat from the soldiers, and it smelled in there. However, they weren’t going to get far with the Ion cannon blasting at the castle and at them.  
“Ok,” Shiro’s voice cut through the silence, “Pidge, Lance, and Keith will go in and disable the shield. You three will go in with the Green Lion, since Pidge has the cloaking device. I doubt that we have the element of surprise, but it’s worth a shot. Hunk and I will stay out here and defend the Castle. Does that sound good?”  
“One question,” Pidge said, “Why do you need three people to disable a shield?”  
“They know we’re trying to break the ion cannon, so there will likely be reinforcements already there. Pidge, you’re the only one who will know how to disable the shield, but I don’t want to send you in there alone. So Lance and Keith will have your back. Anything else?”  
“Yeah,” Lance spoke up, “Why Keith and I? Couldn’t it be Pidge, Hunk, and me, while you and Keith stay out here? You and Keith are probably the best fighters out of all of us, so it would make more sense.” Lance’s voice trailed off slightly at the end. He thinks I’m a good fighter… Keith thought to himself. A warmness spread through, that he choose to ignore.  
“Because you and Keith need some practice on being a team and working together.” Shiro says in his dad voice. “Now, get moving!” All three of them snapped into action, and raced to the Castle. Lance and Keith booked it to Green’s hanger, not talking much, except for a few grumbles from Lance. Keith heard him mumble a, “Why does Shiro think he’s our dad?” Keith glanced at Lance and then kept running towards Green’s hanger. Shiro did have the tendency to act like a dad to the other paladins, but Keith had always thought of Shiro as a brother. He and Shiro had been friends for such a long time, that Keith just regarded Shiro as family by now. Besides, Shiro had been the first one that Keith had come out to.  
It’s not like Keith being gay isn’t obvious; A goldfish could probably tell that Keith wasn’t straight. But still, the way Shiro accepted it, and told Keith that it was fine and he didn’t think of Keith as weak or as any different was amazing. Keith had always looked up to Shiro, and was scared if him being gay was going to change the way Shiro looked at him, the way Shiro would talk to him. But it never did, in fact, Keith believed that Shiro respected him more because of it. Shiro was straight, you could that from the way he acts around Allura, but Shiro knew how much it took for Keith to come out. Shiro was proud.  
Keith smiled to himself at the memories. He could understand where Lance was coming from when he complained about Shiro, but Keith wouldn’t change Shiro for anything.  
They arrived at Green’s hanger and boarded the lion. Pidge got Green out of the hanger and activated the cloaking device. They flew under the noses of the Galra fighters and got into position under the Galra warship. They ejected from Green and silently flew to ship.  
“Ok, we’re in position. Opening the hatch.” Pidge narrated while she carefully opened the hatch and floated into the ship. Keith followed her and Lance was close behind. Once all three of them were inside, they replaced the hatch and looked around.  
It was dark, and looked like every other Galra ship they ever had to go on. And it smelled bad. It smelled like a wet dog, or an old fur carpet that has been lying in the sun for ten days. Pidge walked up to an outlet and plugged her computer in and started to type furiously away. Lance and Keith stood guard, occasionally looking over their shoulder to Pidge, then one another.  
“Ok,” Pidge broke the silence, “The main hub is three corridors down that way,” She waves her hand to the left, where Keith was standing guard. “Once we get there, there will be a main computer where I can shut down the shield. Once off, Hunk can blast that cannon to shreds. We can run back here and get in my lion, and get back to the Castle. Sound like a plan?” Keith muttered a “Yeah,” and Lance nodded. They slowly made their way down the hallway, checking each corner for any Galra soldier. Checking any noise, or anything that seemed out of place. They reached the hub fast, with no intrusions. They made a scan of the room, and no one was in there. It seemed too easy.  
“I thought Shiro said that they would know we were coming?” Lance said.  
“Are you complaining that this is easy” Pidge replied.  
“No, I think he means that this is too easy,” Keith said, “There should be soldiers here. This is the main computer, even if they didn’t expect us, there should always be someone here.”  
“Yeah, the Mullet is right,” Keith shot Lance a look at the name, which Lance shot a look right back, “Let’s just get the shield down and get out of here.” Pidge nodded at that, and plugged in her computer to the Galra one. She focused in on the lines of code on her screen as she began to hack away the Galra defense and firewalls. Lance and Keith kept by the doorway with their bayards drawn, looking out into the hallway every so often. They listened for any noises or steps from soldiers, but the hallways were quiet. Which only put them more on edge.  
“Ok, the defenses are down. I should be able to get the shield down in a matter of ticks.” Pidge said quietly. Keith and Lance both nodded, and continued to watch for anything. Lance sighed through the air, which caught Keith’s attention. Keith looked at Lance, who flushed, shrugged, then looked back at the hallway, where a light stepping noise caught their attention. They glanced at each other, to make sure they both heard it, and nodded. They held their bayards close, and motioned to Pidge, who nodded, and backed around the desk to hide and continue hacking into the shield systems. The light steps became louder, closer, until it felt that the steps were right on top of them. Keith grasped at his sword, itching for a fight. He fixed his stance on the floor, and got prepared for anything that came down the hallway. One soldier, or a whole fleet of them? The steps sounded so light, and there seemed to only be one person. Fine by him, one person meant it would be easier to fight them. The steps suddenly stopped. Keith and Lance held their breath while trying to hear something. They craned their necks, when they heard a loud screeching noise that made them jump back. It sounded like a demented bird. Keith rushed back to the hallway and looked out. That’s when he saw it.  
Oh, fuck.  
“Guys-” Keith tried to say, tried to warn them what was there, but then the creature made a dive for Keith, which he narrowly avoided by jumping back in the hub and closing the door. His breath was coming out fast. That’s why no one is here, that’s why there was only one, that’s why-  
“Keith, what’s out there?” Lance said, fear swirling around in his eyes.  
“A druid.” Keith deadpanned. Keith’s mind was running a mile a minute. How are we going to get out of this alive? Don’t druids play mind games? What if this is all an illusion?  
“Oh, fucking hell.” Lance looked to the floor, then at his bayard. “How do we kill a druid?” There was a banging at the door, which made all of them cringe and tighten their hold on their bayards.  
“Guys,” Pidge chimed in, “If you can hold the druid off, I may have enough time to get the shields down. Then we can bolt for my lion.” There was a bit of doubt in her voice. There was probably no way out of this without taking some kind of a risk. Keith looked to Lance, who was already staring at him, and nodded. They both took a deep breath, and opened the door.  
They bolted into the hallway, trying to get the druids attention away from Pidge. Which seemed to work, since the druid made a horrid bird sound and gave chase. They rounded a corner, and skid to a stop. They pressed their backs to the wall, and waited for the monster to appear. When the druid didn’t immediately show up, Lance peaked his head from the corner to look down the hall.  
“It’s not there....” His voice was tinged with fear and confusion. Lance stepped away from the wall, and looked down further into the hall. The only light in the halls were the dim purple lights that trailed above by the ceiling. Keith kept his back to the wall, and instead of looking the way Lance was looking, Keith looked to where they were running towards.  
“Lance, run!”  
Lance made a confused noise before Keith was shoving him forward back towards where the hub was. Keith knew that druids could appear and reappear, but it didn’t seem fair for it to just be standing right behind them. Lance stumbled, but quickly got to his feet and started sprinting away. Suddenly, both paladins flew on their face from a gust of wind blowing forward. Keith looked up to see the druid looking down at him. Keith jumped to his feet and looped his arm around Lance’s to pull him back up. Lance was shaken, the wind may have gotten knocked out of him. Keith pulled his arm away from Lances to draw out his shield. Right as he did that, he had to use his shield to defend from an attack from the druid. The surprise and the strength from the one hit overwhelmed Keith, and he skid backwards. Keith grunted, and charged forwards at the druid.  
Keith gave it everything he had. Every ounce of training, every early morning, and every Goddamned lecture from Shiro. He swung left and right, which the druid dodged with something resembling grace. The druid swept a hand to Keith’s midsection with enough force to throw him against the wall. Keith’s ears were ringing from the impact, and he couldn’t breathe. He slumped to the floor, trying to breathe. The pain from his back began to radiate out to the rest of his body, but he could ignore it. He focused his attention back at the druid, who was now taking on Lance. Lance was trying to keep his distance, but the druid kept closing the distance between them. The druid got close enough to put its hands on Lance’s shoulders, and pick him up. Lance yelped, and tried to wriggle in an effort to escape. He kicked his feet, but the druid was holding him far away enough so Lance couldn’t kick it. One of its claws dug into Lance’s suit, and Lance yelled at the pain. Keith nudged forward, still trying to regain his breath. Lance looked at Keith right before the druid slammed Lance into the wall, noticeably a lot harder than Keith. Keith winced at the image of Lance being hurt like that. Keith shakily got to his feet, placing on hand on the wall for support. The druid backed away from Lance, not taking its eyes away from the blue paladin. The druid placed its hands out in front of him, and a black energy began to form in the space between its hands, and it aimed the ball towards Lance.  
No.  
No.  
Keith’s legs moved out from under him. He dashed in front of the druid, and placed his hands on where the druids chest would be. A pain dashed through his veins and body. It felt like his blood was boiling, but his body felt cold at the same.time. Keith didn’t care about the pain, Keith didn’t give a fuck.  
He shoved the druid back, and the lightning dancing around in his veins stopped.  
He fell into something warm. Everything was black, but with little blue swirls mixed in. He heard a voice in the distance, it felt so far away, he couldn’t focus on it. He lost it.  
He lost it.


	3. Violet

Something felt weird about the whole situation.   
Lance wasn’t nice to Keith, he called them rivals, he taunted Keith whenever he could, he fought with him everyday. Even today he got in a physical fight with Keith about food goo. Keith taunted him right back and seemingly couldn’t stand Lance.   
So why would Keith have any reason to do that?  
Keith was rash, he was headstrong, he was temperamental. Keith wasn’t nice. Keith wasn’t someone who would risk his life for anyone. Maybe Shiro, since Keith seemed to be boning for the guy, but Lance? Keith hated Lance.  
Well, at least Lance thought that Keith hated him. Now, he was questioning that.   
Lance always thought Keith was pretty easy to read. That’s why Lance could easily push his buttons. He knew what bugged Keith, and he used that to his advantage so Keith would get mad and pay attention to him. Lance knew he was being annoying when he did this, but he feared that no one would notice him if he wasn’t loud and obnoxious all the time.   
So why would Keith save him?  
Right after Keith pushed the druid away with brute force, Lance lunged to catch Keith. His body reacting before his mind, Lance wasn’t thinking about what Keith just did, or how much pain he must be in. The druid must have either been hurt or surprised by Keith’s attack, since it stumbled a bit. Within the time that the fight was going on, Pidge had managed to get the shields down, Hunk destroyed the cannon, and both Shiro and Hunk were coming to help. They arrived right as the druid was about to attack Lance and Keith again. Pidge, Shiro, and Hunk took it on, and Lance was ordered to get Keith back to the Castle. Lance picked up Keith bridal style in his arms, and ran as fast as he could. Keith felt like dead weight in Lance’s arms, he was barely breathing. Lance kept whispering stupid things like, “It’s ok, it will all be fine.” Keith was out cold, and Lance knew he couldn’t hear him, but he felt he needed to say these things for himself. Shiro had brought out Blue, and Lance rushed back to the castle. As soon as he docked, Allura was all over Keith. Lance followed her to the healing pods. Lance placed him in one, and right as the lid shut, Lance’s mind went into overdrive.   
Why? Why did he do that? Is he going to make it? Does he care about me? No, I’m just his teammate. He didn’t have to do that, he could've just let me get hurt. I would’ve been in the pod instead of him. How did he do that? Was it adrenaline?   
Allura must of left him alone with Keith in the med-bay, which was where he was now. It must have been a few hours by now. A few hours of Lance just staring at Keith. The other paladins must have defeated the druid somehow by now, and they’re leaving him alone with Keith. Lance studied Keith’s face. Keith looked like Hell, like he was having a nightmare. Lance didn’t understand, he couldn’t wrap his brain around it. Keith was going through this for Lance. That should have been Lance if Keith didn’t jump in front of them. Keith sacrificed himself for him.   
And that pissed Lance off.   
Lance was the one who risked his life for others, not Keith. Keith was already good at everything, he didn’t need the ego boost. Keith couldn’t steal Lance’s thing, Lance was selfless when it counted, Keith was selfish. Keith was being selfish by jumping in front of that druid, he was being careless and stupid. Lance studied Keith’s face from where he was sitting on the cold, white floor. It seemed Keith was still having a nightmare. Good, Lance thought, serves him right for risking his life like that.   
“Lance,”  
It would have almost been funny how high Lance jumped out of surprise if not for the situation. Lance stood up, and turned to the voice.   
“Hey Shiro, sorry if I hogged up all the Keith time. He’s all yours.” Lance turned to leave, but Shiro put his hand up. Shiro crossed the medbay towards Lance. He looked over at Lance and then to the pod where Keith was in. He sighed, closed his eyes, and sat down. Lance followed his lead and sat back down next to him.   
There was a long pause where no one talked. Lance had his eyes fixed on the floor, and Shiro’s went from Lance to a passed out Keith. Lance suddenly wondered what Shiro must be feeling about all this. Shiro and Keith were friends, some would even say they were like family. To have someone that close to you be so reckless...  
“I don’t think Keith should’ve done that.” Shiro broke the silence. Lance snapped his eyes back to him, who was now looking at the floor. “Keith is known for being careless, and he clearly wasn’t thinking when he did that.” Something about Shiro saying that made Lance’s chest hurt, which he ignored that pain. “I don’t mean that I’m not happy that you’re alive-”  
“I know what you meant.” Shiro looked at Lance with a confused face, but shook whatever question he had in his head away.   
“We should have known something was up when you guys didn’t have any Galra to fight. And when Pidge told us that a Druid was in there, we should come and gotten you. We shouldn’t of let you guys fight it. Someone was bound to get hurt, we’re just lucky that it wasn’t fatal.”  
“Yeah…” Lance looked at Keith. Keith would be ok, and maybe they would even laugh at this in the future. Keith will be fine. He will be fine. He will be-  
“I’m sure this isn’t easy for you, but remember; just take care of yourself.”   
“How am I not taking care of myself right now?” Shiro looked at Lance, and chuckled a little.   
“Lance, you’ve been sitting on a cold, hard floor looking at an unconscious body for hours. You’ve missed dinner, and it looks like you haven’t even patched up the wounds you got in the battle.” He stated, perhaps a little too cheery.  
“Why didn’t someone come and get me?” Lance said with a little bite in his voice.   
“We all agreed you would need time to process what just happened-”  
“Process?!” Lance stood up and looked down at Shiro, “He fucking pushed a Goddamn druid away to save my life! He fucking hates me! He can’t stand me, and then he has the gall to do something as stupid as that?!” HIs breath was coming out far too fast. Shiro looked calm as he stood up. He was taller than Lance by a bit, but it didn’t faze Lance that he had to look up to Shiro. He always seemed to have to look up to someone, or be in their shadow.  
“Keith doesn’t hate you,” Shiro said slowly, “He just has an odd way with people. You two are vastly different. You have a big family, social skills, friends, he never had any of that.” He sighs, “Besides, if he did hate you, he would have punched you when you tried to steal his food goo this morning.”  
Lance looked to the ground, and Shiro put his hands on his shoulders.   
“I hope that this whole experience can actually get you two to get along better.” Lance snickered at that.   
“Classic dad,” Lance laughed out, “When something horrible happens, you want the kids to have a learning lesson from it.” Lance shrugged off Shiro’s hands, and began to walk out of the Med-bay. Lance could hear the faint questioning coming from Shiro, “I’m the dad?” Which made Lance laugh a lot harder than it should’ve.   
Lance decided to check in with Hunk before heading to bed, God knows he was tired. Hunk was happy to see that he was ok, minus a few scratches from the fight. Hunk scraped up what he could for Lance to eat, and then when Lance was basically falling asleep on his shoulder, Hunk ushered him off to bed, saying,”You need rest!”  
On the walk back to his room he reflected on what Shiro said. All of his interactions with Keith, Keith always seemed on edge with Lance around. Like he didn’t understand Lance, or where Lance was coming from. Which n makes sense with what Shiro said. Lance knew in the back of his mind that Keith lived alone in the desert before all this, and that whenever Lance asked Keith what he missed from Earth, it took Keith a minute to even think of something. And it was always something so mundane, like potato chips. Lance never once tried to understand why, he just went on with how he missed his family, and friends, and internet.  
God, he was selfish.   
Lance arrived at his room, opened the door and slipped inside. He sat on his bed, and before he could even start his night face routine, sleep captured him.

Everything was black. He put a hand in front of his face, but he couldn’t even see it. The air smelled think, musky even. It smelled familiar, like he had just been around this smell. It smelled bad, like something crawled in the air ducts and died. Maybe a wet dog? Purple lights blared down on him, blinded him. He looked around, and he saw Galra soldiers lined up, and he was in the middle of a line of troops.   
The smell kicked the memory; The Galra ship. This was a Galra ship, and he was in line with Galra soldiers. He looked down at himself. He was in Galra uniform, and holding this knife with a weird symbol on it. Fear bubbled in his throat, the knife in his hands felt heavy, too heavy to hold, but he couldn’t drop it. What was going on? Why was he here?   
A large monitor came into view, and Zarkon’s head fizzled into view.   
“I’m glad you came.” His deep, crackly voice came on, blasting from all around him, “I knew you would make the right choice in the end.” Suddenly, all the soldiers around him disappeared, which left him alone with the screen of Zarkon. Nothing made sense, everything about this felt so foreign, but yet familiar. It felt like he wasn’t supposed to be here, that he wasn’t supposed to hear this, but at the same time it felt this was made for him. He ran a hand through his hair, to try to calm himself. But even that felt weird. Did his hair grow longer without him noticing? He was too confused, too scared, felt too overwhelmed for everything.   
“Don’t worry,” Zarkon’s voice cut through the darkness, “It will all be over soon.”   
A new screen to the right of Zarkon’s head. It was the Castle, just sitting in space. Calm. There was a pang in his heart. Why? Shouldn’t he feel glad that they were safe? Why did he feel so empty looking at the Castle? He didn’t feel like himself. He didn’t feel in control of his own body.   
“With you here instead of there, we can finally get somewhere.” Here? Where is here? Why aren’t I there? “I heard they aren’t running as smoothly without you.” That’s wrong. That’s not right, if I left, they wouldn’t miss me. They would carry on. This isn’t true.   
“You’re wrong, they would just find a new paladin to kick your ass.” Even my voice is wrong. It’s not mine. Nothing is mine. Zarkon seemed confused at that statement, but his face began to fizzle out. Everything seemed to break away. 

Lance woke up in a cold sweat. His back was sticking to his shirt, and his neck ached with the position he slept in. He hadn’t even managed to take his shoes off. Lance doesn’t care what his feet must smell like because what the fuck was that?  
The answer is a dream. A nightmare. But usually, Lance’s nightmare’s are about home, or not getting back home. Never about whatever the fuck that was. What the fuck?   
Lance laid back on his bed and stared at the ceiling. It was early morning, probably around 3 am if they were back on Earth. Lance decided the best thing to do was to ignore that the dream ever happened, never talk about, and only think about and deeply analyze it when he was alone.   
Good plan.


	4. Jaune

“Lance, you can’t stay in your room all day!”   
“Watch me!”  
Hunk let his head rest on the cold metal door. He focused in on the other side of the door. There was nothing: no wrestling or walking about. Lance was probably stuck in bed. When Lance didn’t come for breakfast, the group had been worried. Allura instructed everyone to give Lance time to deal with all this, but skipping breakfast wasn’t like Lance. What happened on that ship was too graphic for anyone, and Lance needed some time to process everything. When he came to the kitchen late last night, he seemed fine, too fine. He was hiding it, he was pretending that nothing was wrong. He was pretending that Keith didn’t save his life. Allura had run the calculations that if the druid had blasted Lance head on, he had a 5% chance of surviving, which no one dared to tell Lance that. That morning, Shiro told everyone to let Lance have his time, and that there will be no more missions until Keith is awake and functioning. Hunk ignored Shiro, left early, and bolted for Lances bedroom. He then proceeded to try to coerce Lance to get out, which proved fruitless.   
“Come on, man. I just want to talk. We don’t have to talk about what happened yesterday.” A pause. Hunk awkwardly stood there, basically talking to a door. Just as he was about to leave and do more productive things, a long, stretched out sigh came from the other side of the door. Then, slow, muffled footsteps. The door hissed open, and there stood Lance. He looked paler than usual, he had dark circles under his eyes, and his shoulders were slumped in. His eyes were glued to the floor, and he mumbled a “come on in.” He side stepped to allow Hunk in. Hunk stepped in to Lance’s room. This, or course, hadn’t been the first time he had been in this room. They spent a lot of time together, just like in the Garrison, talking and laughing at stupid jokes. Hunk made his way to the bed, and sat down. The bed made a creaking sound, and Hunk looked over at Lance. He closed the automatic door, and begrudgingly made his way to the bed, and sat next to Hunk. All of Lance’s body language screamed comfortableness, which Hunk wasn’t used to. There was usually an ease to hanging out with Lance, and now it seemed forced and awkward.   
“How was breakfast?” Lance’s voice was low and gravelly, like he hadn’t slept well.   
“We had food goo, nothing special.”   
“Oh, that’s cool.”   
Silence fell over both of them. Hunk continued to study Lance and his behavior, and Lance looked away from Hunk’s stare, intent on picking at a spot on the bed. Lance had severe bed head, and his skin wasn’t as radiant as usual. Did he skip his skin care routine? Lance let out a long, exasperated breath, and cut through the silence.  
“Ok, let’s get it over with. Keith did something stupid and reckless that probably saved my life.”   
“Well, reckless, maybe, but not stupid.” Lance looked over at him with big eyes.  
“Hunk, he didn’t have time to think it through. He was acting on impulse.”   
“And his impulse was to save you.” Blush settled onto Lance’s complexion, and he looked back and the spot he had been picking at. Hunk leaned over to try to get a better look at his face, but Lance shifted his body away from him so he couldn’t see him. “What do you really feel about it?” Lance chuckled.   
“God, you sound like a counselor.” Hunk laughed at that, as well. It was a common and cliché counselor line to say. “Like, not even a good one. Just one in a comedy movie that’s there to be made fun of.” A pause. “I miss movies.”   
“Allura and Coran have given us Altean movies, but  
“They’re not the same.” They said in perfect unity. The movies usually had a weird romantic undertone that never made sense, and the acting was God awful. They once had a conversation about the lack of explosions and plotlines in those movies. The special effects were great, probably because they never used a green screen, rather just travel to a planet with the perfect scenery. But they didn’t have the classics, like 'Fight Club' or 'The Godfather', with enough of a plot that can carry out the action and violence. The Altean culture was just too weird.   
“So, what bothers you that Keith saved you? I know you two have had this weird revival tension all through this, but..” Hunk’s voice trailed off. Everything about Lance’s body language said he needed to rest, which must mean that he didn’t get that much sleep. Lance almost never lost sleep for anything or anyone, so this was unusual.   
“I don’t know! I just don’t like this feeling. It’s not like Keith to do this! Why me?” Lance looked up to the ceiling, still avoiding eye contact with Hunk. “Like, it’s not his thing to save people, you know? He’s not selfless, so why would he do that?”  
“You could ask him that when he wakes up.” Lance looked over at Hunk with a look on his face that was a mix of appalled and humiliation.   
“Oh God. I can’t be there when he wakes up.” Lance looked back up to the ceiling, and put his hands over his eyes and pressed down. Hunk sat there, watching his best friend, and twiddled with his hands for a beat. Hunk tried to rack his brain on why Lance wouldn’t want to be there when Keith wakes up. Lance didn’t like facing hard situations, he would rather just hide from them until they went away. But there was no way in Hell that Lance could hide from this. It was too serious, and too important to ignore.   
“You have to be there. Everyone will be really mad at you if you aren’t. And think about, Keith would be wondering where you are, too. After he just saved your life, and now you don’t even come to see him and thank him.” Lance ripped his hands off his eyes and stared into Hunk.  
“I’m not thanking him.”  
“What! You have to, you saved your-”  
“I didn’t ask him to! I didn't want him to get hurt instead of me! I should be in the pod, not him! I don’t know, Hunk. I don’t fucking know, and it’s driving me insane. I can’t think, I can’t sleep because of these stupid nightmares, and I can’t even-”  
“Woah woah woah. Nightmares?” Hunk cut Lance off. Lance cringed, and starting mumbling.   
“Yeah, I couldn’t sleep last night because of these nightmares.”  
“Were they about yesterday?” Lance kicked his feet against the bed.   
“Hunk, we don’t have to talk about this. I really don’t want to talk about it.”   
“If they’re about yesterday then I think you should talk about it.” Lance abruptly got up, and started pacing the room as he talked.   
“No? I guess yesterday must have triggered them, but they’re not about it. They’re so random, and I don’t know.” He stopped in front of Hunk, and waited for a reaction from the man.   
“Tell me about them.” There was a pause where Lance must have decided whether or not to tell Hunk about the dreams or not. Lance started pacing from one side of the room to the other as he recalled the night before.   
“I had two last night. I tried to go back to sleep after the first one, but that just ended up in another nightmare. Both of them I was on a Galra ship with a Galra uniform on. And Zarkon was talking to me, and in the second one he said something like ‘I’m so glad you decided to leave Voltron and join me.’ Like, what the fuck?” Lance paused and looked over at the door. He sighed, and continued, “Then I started falling down, and I woke up. It felt so real, not only physically but emotionally. I was scared both times, and I don’t know why I’m dreaming about this.” Hunk looked at his distressed friend. He needed to rest after everything that happened, maybe he would ask Coran for some sleep medicine to help Lance.   
“Were there any specific details that you remember?” Lance looked at Hunk, but his eyes were dazed. Dreams were always hard to remember, but it was obvious that Lance was trying.   
“I was on a ship. My body didn’t feel like my body, and I had a little small knife that had this weird alien symbol on it. It looked kind of like the on Ulaz had.” Hunk nodded.  
“Ulaz was part of the resistance, The Blade of Whatever, not the Glara army. Isn’t it weird that the symbol was from the resistance but you were on a Galra ship?” Lance looked deep in thought, but then shook his head.   
“It was a dream, I don’t think we can logically analyze it. Maybe my brain just attached to anything Galra related?” Hunk nodded his head. Dreams were weird, and they never were logical. It would be impossible to successfully try and decode it, maybe he could ask Coran for help with this too. Still, it was worrisome to think about the dreams. The way Lance explained it, it seemed that Lance betrayed Voltron to join Zarkon in his dream, which would never happen. Why would Lance’s subconscious think about that, could that ever happen? “Anything else you want to talk about, because now I’m up and hungry.” Hunk let out a breathy chuckle. He looked up at Lance, who was standing in front of him with a small smile plastered on his face. Lance looked a little better, still sleep deprived, but at least he talked about it. Hunk was still worried though. Aside from the dreams, which he will have to talk to Coran about, the way Lance was viewing this whole Keith situation wasn’t good. Lance didn’t want Keith to save him, that much was obvious, but it almost seemed that Lance would rather switch places with him than be where he is now.   
“If you feel like you’re done talking, I’m not going to push. Just know that I’m here whenever you want to talk.” Hunk got off the bed, and stood next to Lance.   
“I already know that. I think I still need some time to sort things out, but until then, let’s get some food goo.” Lance now had his familiar happy ring to his voice, and in the few seconds that passed, had looked more awake. Hunk walked out with Lance, and followed close behind, still studying Lance’s behavior and trying to read his thoughts. Hunk was pretty sure that Lance didn’t tell all of his troubles to him, but at least most of them. They arrived in the kitchen, and Hunk took out a plate and put some food goo onto it, and handed it to Lance. He was in the middle of devouring it when Pidge strolled in.   
“Hey, look who’s awake.” Lance made a noise that said ‘I know you’re here, but I have a mouth full of goo and I can’t talk to you right now.’ She nodded her head, and looked to Hunk. In a low whisper, so Lance couldn’t hear, she talked to him.   
“Did you talk to him?” Hunk looked over at Lance. He was too busy eating the goo to notice that Pidge was talking to him. Even if he did notice, Hunk was pretty sure that Lance wouldn’t care, or at least he wouldn’t think that they were talking about him.   
“Yeah, he had a nightmare last night, so I think I’m going to talk to Coran about getting some sleeping medicine. He seems upset about the whole Keith thing, but I’m sure he’ll get over it.” Pidge snickered. “What?” Hunk deadpanned.   
“He’s salty.”  
“No he’s not.”   
“Yes he is! Lance is the one to save people, and now he’s salty that Keith saved his life.” Hunk rolled his eyes and looked back over at Lance. He was done with the food goo, and now was walking over to them.   
“So, what are we going to do today?” He leaned back and placed his hand on his hips. Pidge and Hunk shared a glance, and started to list off the things that needed to happen today.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, ok. I'm sooo sorry it's been this long since I posted. I started the next chapter, and basically got done with it and then I decided that I needed a chapter in between. Sooo good news, the next chapter is almost done. But wow, I'm really sorry it's been this long.


	5. Bleu Foncé

Who the hell were all these people?  
Something in the back of his mind screamed at him to run to these strangers and embrace them, and even though Keith would never do something like that, he physically couldn’t if he wanted to. His legs were planted like lead into the ground. These people waved at him frantically, trying to get his attention, but he couldn’t even speak up to say he saw them. His throat ached, felt too dry to even mutter a sound. Keith noticed that one of them, an older woman with graying roots, tall, skinny, tan, was kneeling on the ground, sobbing. Her frail figure was hunched over, caging herself in. Her cries were broken down, with a mix of both English and- was that Spanish? Keith never studied that language, he took French. The only two languages offered at his high school were French and Spanish, and he didn’t know what compelled him to take French instead of Spanish. He lived in Texas, right by the border of Mexico. He heard it on the beach enough to understand what language she was speaking in. Why was she crying for him? He never met the woman, never met any of them. All of the people in front of him seemed to be showing a mix of happy and sad, which was off-putting. He was in an extreme state of confusion.  
Keith pulled his eyes away from the large group of people- were they all related? They all looked similar to one another- and looked around at his surroundings. It was a beach. The blue, ocean waves piled up one after another onto the shore, and dotted in the sand were little seashells. The ocean stretched for miles, reseeding into the horizon. Keith didn’t mind the ocean, sometimes he indulged himself to think about how many mysteries there must be at the bottom, but he never really went to the beach. He sometimes got dragged to go with Shiro and some of his other Garrison “friends” before the Kerberos mission went wrong. When those rare times happened, Keith tried very hard to stay away from the people and the sun. The fresh, sea salt breeze was in the air, which was a nice change of pace to the stuffy air he was used to breathing in. The breeze pulled at his hair a bit, the wind licking at his clothes. The soft, water sprays sometimes catching on his face. It… was nice.  
He refocused his attention to the family- yes, he was going to call them a family- who were now staring at him. Every time Keith looked at them, each of their faces individually, a soft emotion of relief swept over him, followed by a soft pang of regret. Even though Keith was sure he has never seen any of them in his life, they did look familiar. He took in all their adjectives and characteristics: Tall, skinny, tan, brown hair, spoke Spanish….  
Huh. They’re like Lance. Is this Lance’s family?  
Keith scanned the family for Lance, but he wasn’t included in the crowd. Now that he thought about it, the family eerily resembled Lance, they all looked almost identical to each other. There were a few outliers; A short girl with black hair stood in the back of the pack. If this really was Lance’s family, why were they crying at him? He’s never even met any of them, he’s only heard of stories through Lance.  
Just as Keith finished that thought, the family began getting farther away. It felt like there were strings being pulled at his heart the further he got away from them. Blackness engulfed his surroundings, until he could only hear their lingering voices. It felt like he had lost something he never had. They screamed out for him, yelling at him to, “Come back!” and, “Don’t leave us!” Their voices echoed within his head, their cries seeming far too loud for him to handle. He put his hands over his ears to try to cover the sound, but nothing helped. The yells and screams resonated within his head, bouncing off the walls. It got so loud, he had to crouch down and yell into nothingness to try to make it stop. His ears were ringing, and he could feel the blood pumping around his ears. He closed his eyes tight, trying to focus on breathing, but even that seemed too daunting of a task. His chest hurt, his head hurt, but the emotional pain outweighed everything. It felt like a piece of his past had just been ripped out of his heart. He’s never felt that emotion. And just as soon as the emotion appeared, it left, leaving in its wake an unsettling void.  
Blinding lights soared into view, making him squeeze his eyes even tighter. He wasn’t holding up his own weight, something else was doing that. He merely lay limp in mid air, in utter confusion. He felt like he was going to throw up at any minute.  
“Keith? Hey, man. You’re up.”  
I’m up? What does that mean? Keith looked behind him; A cryo pod with its doors open. They opened to let him out. What happened? How did he wind up in there? Keith looked forward and tried to recall what happened, but everything seemed jumbled up between reality and dream.  
The beach, the family; That was a dream, it wasn’t real. But the emotion was real, he could still feel the emptiness of the void linger in his chest. What was real? They went on a mission… and something went wrong?  
“Yeah..” Keith mumbled out. Shiro, the one who was holding him, laughed.  
“Pidge, go get him some food, please.” He said over his shoulder. There was some shuffling behind Shiro, which drew Keith’s attention. Allura and Coran stood next to each other, looking over Keith, probably trying to make sure whatever injuries he had were fully healed. Hunk was looking over Keith with an expression that read both as happy and worried at the same time. Pidge left the room with a smile towards Keith. But there was someone missing…  
“Where’s Lance?” He croaked out. This simple question drew everyone’s attention, then they all glanced at each other. Shiro looked down at Keith before slowly speaking.  
“What do you remember?” He said cautiously.  
“I….” Keith took a moment to recollect himself. “We went on a mission, and there was a Galra battleship..” Hunk nodded along, which Keith took as incentive to keep going. “And we couldn’t get the shields down, so Pidge, Lance, and I went into the ship.. And.. uhhh”  
“Take your time.” Shiro said. Keith huffed out a breath, then continued.  
“There was a druid there. I guess I must have gotten hurt to land myself in the pod.” Silence fell over the room, and Keith could make out Allira whispering to Coran ‘He doesn’t remember.’ Keith looked at each of their faces. What was he forgetting? Why wasn’t Lance here? Shiro interrupted his thoughts.  
“Do you remember anything else?”  
“No. Should I?” Shiro stared hard into Keith, a look that bordered on anger and sympathy. Shiro opened his mouth, but before he got a word out, Pidge entered with a plate full of food goo.  
“Here,” She crossed the room and handed the plate to Keith, who was far too weak to hold it so Shiro took it. “So. How much do you remember?”  
“Why does everyone care about how much I remember? When Lance or Shiro was in the pod, we never asked them about that.” Pidge snorted at that, and adjusted her glasses on her nose.  
“Because, idiot, you dived in front of a druid to save Lance’s life, and now Lance is salty about it.” For a second, you could hear a pin drop. Keith simply looked at Pidge. She wasn’t actually serious, right?  
“Pidge!”  
“Oh, come on Shiro. We all know he is. And judging from Keith's expression, he didn’t remember that small detail. I was there, and it was epic. Like, the druids lightning was all around him, but he just kept pushing!”  
“Pidge, enough!” Shiro snapped. Keith’s jaw was on the floor. Keith. Risk his life. For Lance? And he didn’t remember? Keith looked at the floor, trying desperately to remember anything along those lines. He was on the ground… and then Lance was on the ground… and the druid had a ball of black lightning pointed right at Lance… and Keith just moved without thinking. He didn’t know if he saved Lance’s life, but he did save Lance from a lot of pain and the cryo pods. The memory was hazy, he was sure he was forgetting a lot of details that would probably come to him later, but he did remember it. Shiro, reading the look on Keith’s face, spoke up, “Keith, you ok?”  
“Are you sure I did that?” Pidge nodded her head furiously, and started to ramble on about the event. She started off about the look on Lance’s face, and that the druid didn’t know what to do, or that after Keith passed out and Lance carried him out they had a fight to the death with the druid. Keith stumbled out of Shiro’s arms, feeling uncomfortable with everything. It didn’t feel right, his own skin was crawling. He pulled out the nearest chair and sat himself down.  
“I think it was the adrenaline,” Shiro said slowly, but anger tugged in the back of his voice. Why was he mad at Keith? Shiro probably would talk to him about it later, just another conversation to look forward to. Hunk awkwardly shuffled his feet before speaking up.  
“I don’t think Lance is salty about it,” He said, and Pidge snickered, but Hunk ignored her. “I don’t think he knows what to think or feel about it.”  
“Wait, if I saved his life, shouldn’t he be here? Why isn’t he here?” Anger started to seethe into Keith’s blood, “Even if he doesn’t know how to feel about it, don’t you think he should be here?” Hunk shifted in his feet again, opened his mouth, but nothing came out.  
“Calm down, Keith.” Shiro calmly stated, “He’s going through a lot right now, and-”  
“I’m the one who was in a pod!” Keith reached for the plate of food in Shiro’s hand, which he begrudgingly gave to Keith. He began to eat the goo as fast as he could, trying to eat both the hunger and anger away. Hunk’s soft voice cut through the room.  
“I’ve been talking to him, and he really just needs time to process it. I’m sure he regrets not being here, but for now...” His voice trailed off. Hunk was probably disappointed in his friend, you could hear it in his voice.  
“Guys, can I have a moment with Keith. Hunk, go talk to Lance. And Pidge, I don’t want to see you snooping around.” Shiro stated in his most authoritative voice. Hunk shuffled out, and Pidge rolled her eyes, but left with Hunk. Allura left with a nod, but Coran lingered a little longer.  
“Shiro? After you’re done talking, I need to talk to you about something on the charts for Keith’s brain.” Keith looked at Coran. He looked confused and worried. Coran shifted his sight to Keith, and they shared a glance. Coran looked like he knew something that Keith didn’t, which worried him.  
“Did the pod not work?” Shiro’s voice rang through the room.  
“No, but the chart is…” He looked back at the clipboard and grimaced. “Nevermind, don’t worry about it.” Coran left abruptly. Shiro stared at the door and Coran’s absence. He shook his head, leaned on the table, and looked to Keith.  
“I know the last thing you want to do is get yelled at for something you don’t remember, but Keith that was very irresponsible. You put the whole team in danger, and you could have died. You would have died if we didn’t have these pods.”  
“It’s a good thing we do, then.” Keith’s voice had a bit of bite in it. Shiro was damn right when he said this was the last thing he wanted to do. He was hungry, tired, and mad at Lance. Keith just wanted to sleep and take his anger out with training, but training wasn’t the best idea with just getting out of a pod. He stared hard into Shiro, and Shiro stared back. His expression slowly softened.  
“You’re lucky I’ve had two weeks to think about this. I’m not mad anymore.” Keith’s face went from anger to shock and confusion in less than two seconds.  
“I’ve been in the pod for two weeks?”  
“Yes, and with you back we may finally be able to get something done. We’ll give you a few days to recover, but after that we’ll be back into full swing. Just don’t do it again. Promise me that.” Keith nodded, and continued to finish off his plate of food goo. “Ok, I’m going to talk to Coran. You get some rest.” Shiro stood straight up, and patted Keith on the shoulder. He looked down at Keith for a moment longer, and stalked out of the medbay. Keith finished off the food goo, and then looked down at his empty plate. He set it on a nearby table. Keith still felt light headed, but stood up nevertheless. His strength was draining, but he continued to walk out of the bay, and head to his room. He stumbled a little, but he caught himself every time. The hallways started to blend together, and Keith started to worry if he could even get to his room on his own. His legs felt like jelly, and there was a constant cloud hanging over his head. His mind and body screamed for sleep, and any anger that was left for Lance completely dissipated. He had to lean up against the wall for support. His legs felt so wobbly, so unstable like he could fall at any moment. He put one foot out, then placed his weight on it. One step, then another, his full concentration on walking. Slowly, he made ground to his room. He was just outside his room when he heard the door ahead of him slide open with a hiss. Hunk slide out, and was in mid-sentence when he saw Keith and abruptly stopped and ran to him to place his arms under Keith’s armpits.  
“Keith! I thought Shiro would walk you back.” Keith let his weight fall unto Hunk, which caused a wave of relief to come over his aching body.  
“He had to talk to Coran.” Keith mumbled out. He felt so ridiculous and embarrassed with Hunk having to hold him up. “Sorry.” He straightened up and out of Hunk’s arms. His body screamed out, but he ignored it for the most part. He placed his hand on his door for added support so Hunk wouldn’t have to catch him again. Hunk seemed to protect a bit at Keith’s actions, and stayed within arms reach just in case Keith needed help.  
“I never got to say this, but it’s nice to have you back. The team hasn’t been the same.” Hunk patted Keith’s back. Keith smiled at that. He knew that he was important to the team, just like anyone to team Voltron, but it was nice to hear that reassurance. Hunk cleared his throat in a different direction than Keith, aimed at someone else. Wasn’t Hunk talking to someone before Keith got here…? Keith looked over to where Hunk’s attention had escaped, and almost openly gaped. There stood Lance.  
He was shifting his weight every few seconds, and a flush appeared on Lance’s face when he and Keith made eye contact. His hands were stuffed in his pockets of his coat, and his posture was rather poor. He had dark circles under his eyes, and he started to kick the air with his feet. Hunk cleared his throat again, and Lance visibly jumped.  
“Yeah, it’s, uh, good to have you back.” Lance, instead of making eye contact with Keith while saying this, looked at the floor. He mumbled out the words to the point where Keith could barely make out what he was saying. Hunk scoffed at his friend, clearly annoyed at him.  
“Lance, at least try to-” Keith promptly cut him off, to both Hunk’s and Lance’s surprise.  
“It’s fine, Hunk. Can I just go to sleep now?” Keith knew he would have a conversation with Lance about what happened two weeks ago, and his absence early today, but for now he needed sleep. Sleep was the priority on his list, so talking to Lance was going to be put off. Lance had his mouth hanging open, which would have made Keith laugh if he wasn’t so damn tired. Hunk nodded and walked up to Lance and dragged him away. Keith didn’t waste a second and opened his door, and all but fell on top of his bed.


	6. Jaune Vif

The third step on the stairs was creaky.   
He carefully stepped over this step, and jumped from the second to the fourth step in a silent effort. The wood was rotting away, he tested each step by putting half his weight on it before he made the full commitment. There was a curve at the top of the stairs leading to the second floor. There was a window at the very top, that used to be decorated with stained glass of blue, red, and yellow. Now, the window had been broken, only a few faded colors were left that had not been broken. Shards from the broken window were lying on the top step, which he carefully avoided.   
The second floor was where most of the bedrooms were. The walls used to be a bright yellow, with modern art hanging from a nail. All the art had either been stolen or broken; There was a piece that had a burned hole right through the middle. The walls had faded an ugly dull yellow, and the lights didn’t work. There were four doorways, each to a different shared bedroom. He took the path that he was most familiar with, the second to last door to on the left. The wooden door had spots were the wood had rotted away, and the doorknob had been kicked in long ago. He nudged the door, giving way to a loud creak that echoed throughout the empty house. He walked in into his old room. The walls were the same now dull yellow, but blue accents had been painted in his room, but the color had dulled. His bed lay in the corner, an obvious divot in the middle of the mattress, and the sheets messily thrown on the bed. Any posters on the wall had either fallen down or had holes glaring through them. The was little light creepy through the window; It had been boarded up after something had broken it. The dresser had its drawers opened hastily, with old, dusty clothes with moth holes thrown onto the floor. The work desk had papers all over it, but the pencil marks were too faded to be able to read it. A voice rang out in his head, loud and clear, “There’s nothing here for you anymore.” At that, almost on autopilot, he turned to leave. He closed the door behind him, and stood in the hallway for a moment longer. His heart ached at seeing this empty house, but Keith didn’t know why. He had never been in this house, yet he automatically moved through it like he lived here for years.   
He carefully walked down the stairs, skipping the third to last step yet again. He hopped down, the floorboards giving way to his weight. He crossed the modest dining room to the kitchen. The cupboards had been flipped open, either forcibly or by the wind, the dishes inside were faded an off white, while some of them lay broken on the floor. A foul smell came the refrigerator, making Keith sick to his stomach. He tiptoed around the broken glass and plates to enter the modest living room. The couch used to be a bright red, now faded and torn to shreds. There was a coffee table, but one of the legs had broken off, and now the table was slanted. The TV had fallen on the hardwood floor, and was lying screen down with broken glass surrounding it.   
Even though Keith was sure that the house was empty, he could hear this nagging voice. It was low, and slow. Barely audible, but if he focused in on it he could make out the words, “This is what happened.” Keith thought about those words. They must be referring to the house, that the house was in mess and dismay because of something. Of what? What happened to make this house in ruin? He glanced around the living room, and his eyes landed on a slanted mantel that held some family pictures. He made his ways towards them, and picked one of them up. The glass was cracked in the left corner, but other than that the picture was fine. The pictured showed a family in the middle of a park, they all had broad smiles on. They felt too familiar. Not even in the way dreams sometimes made things seem familiar when they weren’t-- Wait was this a dream?-- but Keith couldn’t sworn he seen these exact people before. The voice bounced off the walls, louder than before. This time it said, “You left them, you forgot about them, so they left you and forgot about you.” Even though Keith didn’t understand those words, a quick slice of pain ripped through him. Part of his mind yelled out, “No! You’re wrong! They wouldn’t forget!” and the other part of him was like, “What.” That part of him told himself that this didn’t make sense, and that this had to be a dream, that that was the only logical answer.   
And just like that, he woke up.   
He had thrown most of the covers off of himself, and he was in a cold sweat. He somewhat expected nightmares, since he just got out of the pod, yet he didn’t expect them to be about that. What was that? A nightmare about a destroyed house? Keith threw his legs over the bed, and pushed himself up. He still didn’t feel great, but he wasn’t stumbling. Usually when he had a bad dream, or couldn’t sleep, he hit the training deck. However, with his current physical state, even Keith knew that he shouldn’t do that. He opened his door, and he headed to the direction of the kitchen. A water pouch, and maybe some late-night food goo could do Keith some good. He made his way to the kitchen, his footsteps echoed throughout the empty hallway. He actually liked the castle when it was in Night Mode. The castle was quiet, and dark. Almost no one was awake when he went for late-night training, maybe Pidge, since she almost never slept. Keith arrived at the kitchen, grabbed a plate, and took the food goo hose and put some on his plate. Then, he reached for a water pouch, and sat to relax in a chair nearby.   
Surprisingly enough, he wasn’t too tired. Sure, he would rather be sleeping right now, yet, he enjoyed the quiet. Some would call this creepy, or feel unease with being alone, but Keith felt recharged when he was alone. For him, this was time to think. He hadn’t allowed himself to think about the whole druid thing, and not the nightmare he had in the pod or the one he just woke up from. The question, then: What did he think about it?   
He was glad it was him in the pod instead of Lance. He had his full memory back of the event, yet, the part where he actually stepped in between the druid and Lance still seemed a little foggy. He didn’t have any knowledge on what happened afterwards. He assumed someone, perhaps Shiro, had gotten him back to the castle while the others fought off the druid. Where did that put Lance? Lance must’ve been in pretty bad shape, so perhaps someone got both him and Lance back to the pods. Did Lance need a pod? He hoped not, then what was the point of basically risking his life. All in all, he didn’t regret stepping in front of that druid.   
The next point was the dreams.   
Keith supposed they had to be an outcome of the whole situation, but that didn’t make it any less confusing. They didn’t connect to anything, they were random. Yet, they made him feel such strong emotions, even though he had no idea what was going on. He could ask Coran about them, he had a general knowledge about these things.   
He chewed on his straw of the water pouch in thought. Planning out the next morning, Keith would first get breakfast, then talk to Coran about the dreams. Then, to see how out of it his body really was, he would go to the training deck. After that, perhaps he could ask Hunk about Lance…  
It felt wrong that Lance wasn’t there when he woke up, Hell, Keith was still a little mad about it. But when he saw Lance right after….  
Lance looked regretful, tired, and confused.   
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to ask Hunk about Lance, since Lance must be feeling something about this whole thing, and Hunk would be the only one who would know. Kind of like Keith and Shiro, Hunk and Lance were a pair that no one couldn’t separate. They’ve been friends for so long, they probably considered each other family by now. Keith smiled at the thought: They were really like a family here. Team Voltron was so much more than just saving the universe, rather, they were like a happy, dysfunctional family. Everyone always had someone to go to when they needed to talk, or for Keith, everyone understood that sometimes he needed time alone to sort his feelings out. He set the now empty plate of food goo down, and leaned back in the chair while sipping on his water pouch. He stared at the wall, still deep in thought.   
Maybe he could even just talk to Lance about the whole thing, rather than tip-toeing around him through Hunk. The conversation was bound to happen anyway, so why wait? Keith didn’t fully understand Lance, he always seemed overly confident, and he was always pushing this one sided rivalry on Keith. He understood it in the Garrison, when rank really mattered, but here? What did Lance have to prove to him? Perhaps it was more something for Lance to prove to himself. Whatever, whenever Lance wanted to stop this stupid rivalry, Keith would meet him halfway.   
“Oh, I thought the kitchen would be empty…”  
Keith turned in his chair to see a bedhead, dark under-eye circle Lance. His posture was shit, and his voice was layered his sleep. Keith glanced at his basically empty water pouched, and shrugged it off. He got up, threw it out, and crossed the room towards the door.  
“I was just leaving, the kitchens all yours.” Before Keith could actually cross the border between the kitchen and the hallway, and hand came up to stop him. Keith lifted his eyes to Lance’s face, which was filled with conflict and sympathy.   
“Wait, I need to talk to you anyway.” His hand had caught Keith’s shoulder, and even though Keith had stopped and made it apparent that he wasn’t going to go, Lance’s hand remained on his shoulder. Lance, with his other hand, gestured to the chair that Keith had just left. Keith let his eyes linger on Lance’s face for a moment longer before crossing back to the chair, escaping Lance’s hand. He sat down, and looked back to the man in front of him. Lance had pulled out a chair for himself, and sat down a few feet in front of Keith. Lance couldn’t quite make eye contact, instead glancing around the kitchen for a few minutes. Lance looked horrible, like he hasn’t slept for weeks. Had he even slept since Keith was put in a pod? Keith waited for Lance to start talking, but nothing happened. So, Keith got the ball rolling.   
“So, are we going to talk, or can I go try to get some sleep?” Lance snapped up at that, a retort fresh on his tongue, but then confusion spread throughout his face.   
“What do you mean by “try?”’ Lance put air quotes around the word. Keith brushed Lance’s thought away with a hand. The last thing he needed Lance to know was that he was having nightmares about an empty house. Lance looked at Keith with mild confusion, and cautiously continued. “So, uh, how are you holding up?” Keith raised an eyebrow at him. Lance was in far worse shape than Keith. Sure, Keith was tired, but it wasn’t like he hadn’t missed sleep before. The only annoying part of this whole deal was that he felt achy. Lance looked like he’s been through Hell and back.   
“Tired, trying to process everything.” Lance nodded at that, “How are you doing?” Lance looked at Keith and tilted his head. It was almost comedic, and impossibly endearing. Lance stuttered to answer.   
“How am I? I’m not the one who almost committed suicide!” He flung his arms all over the place, “Keith! Do you know what that put us all through!”  
“So, you’re mad about it?” Keith dead panned. Lance openly gaped at him.  
“Mad? I don’t know.” Lance leaned back in his chair and looked down at the floor, “Look, I think I am mad, but-”  
“You’re mad that I save your life?” Keith was getting a little agitated, but this was more amusing than anything else. It always fascinated Keith how Lance’s emotions could change on a dime.   
“Yes. But no.” Lance looked up at Keith. Lance rubbed his face with his hand, and wow, he needed sleep.   
“How much sleep have you gotten?”   
“Why does that matter?” Keith glared at him, and Lance started to slowly answered. “Not much. I don’t even know why, I keep having these really weird dreams,” Keith stiffens. So they at least have that in common, “They always have something to do with Galra stuff, so I think it’s because of the whole, uhh” Lance gestures towards Keith, “druid thing. That’s why I’m here, I couldn’t sleep, so I came to get some food.”   
“I would talk to Coran, he knows a lot about that kind of stuff.” He doesn’t mention how he’s dealing with the same thing, and how he’s planning on talking to Coran, too.   
“Yeah, I’ve been kind of talking to Hunk. I thought that once you woke up, they’d be done, but nope.” Lance forces out a chuckle, and looks away. Keith continues studying him. An idea springs inside Lance’s head, and he turns to Keith with a question in his eyes. God, he’s so easy to read. “Hey, why are you here? I guess it would make sense if you couldn’t sleep either, or do you just not sleep?”  
“Everyone sleeps.” Avoiding the question, he looks away from Lance, until Lance loudly clears his throat. “I was still hungry.” Keith says, still not looking at Lance. That wasn’t a lie, he was still hungry from his time in the pod, but truly he was having the same problem as Lance was having. Dreams. Nightmares. Wait… “Tell me about your family.”   
“What?” Lance stated. Ok, that really came out of nowhere, could of transitioned that one better, Keith. He looked back at Lance, who was face echoed Keith’s own thoughts.   
“Tell me about your family.” He repeated, a little louder. Lance looked at Keith with a dumbfounded expression, until he literally shook the thoughts out of his head and began to ramble.   
“Uh, well. I was born in America, but my parents were born in Cuba. They moved here when they were teenagers when the whole Castro thing happened.” Lance nodded into space, as if confirming his own story, “Then they got jobs, met each other, and had a big family. And when I say big, I mean big. I have 5 brothers and 3 sisters, and then all my cousins. I was the third oldest kid, I have an older brother and sister. I was closest to them, we were like the three musketeers. Growing up, me and that older brother, Jacob, were really close. We played football and made fun of girls in our neighborhood. When I got older, I started to be really close to Maria, my older sister. She gave me advice about life: School, Money, stuff like that.” Lance talked with his hands, rolling them over and gesturing wildly, even with the lack of sleep. There was a gleam in his eyes when he talked about this, a gleam Keith never saw, or at least never noticed until now. “Then I got accepted in the Garrison. I visited as often as possible, but it was hard to. And now…” He trails off, and Keith can fill in the rest. He hasn’t seen them at all, and Lance is the most notably homesick. “But, anyway. We lived right by the ocean, you could actually hear the waves rolling in. My mom had a thing about bright colors, so she painted the walls upstairs this bright ass yellow. And, since I loved the color blue, she even accented my room with like, blue swirlies.” Lance traced his fingers in the air along the shape. Keith visibly stiffened. He had a hunch about his dreams, but this was too close. Lance either didn’t notice Keith’s sudden change in posture or didn’t care, and continued his story.   
“We lived pretty well, it got better when Maria and Jacob left for college. Less people to feed. It must have been a little better when I left, too.” Lance’s voice had a trace of sadness in it, but kept going. “ My family was like my support system. I could trust them, it was nice to go home and have people there that cared about you and loved you.” Lance’s eyes looked far away, like he wasn’t really looking at anything. He sighed, then refocused his attention to Keith.   
“Why did you ask that so suddenly?” Keith was at a blank on why. He thought about his dreams, and that he definitely had to talk to Coran about them.   
“I just wondered. Sorry.” Lance brushed off his apology, literally waving a hand towards Keith.   
“Nah, dude. I like talking about them, helps me make sure I don’t forget any detail about them.” Lance showed a small smile, “What about you?”  
“What?”   
“Your family, how were they?” Did Lance not know?  
“I.. don’t really have one?” The statement ended as a question. Lance visibly cringed, and started to stutter out an apology and clarification.  
“I know! Sorry, sorry. Uh, wow. I’m sorry. Ok, uh topic change! Why did you go to the garrison?” Keith chuckled at Lance’s attempts at not making the topic hard for Keith.   
“Someone said I’d be good at it.” Lance waited for a minute, and then he realized that’s all the explanation Keith would give him.   
“That’s it? Someone said you’d be good at it, and you were just like ‘Sure, why not?’” Lance tried an imitation of Keith by crossing his arms in front of chest and putting on a scowl.   
“I got a scholarship, it’s not like I had a lot of options. I knew Shiro in high school, and he’s the one that recommended me to the Garrison. I got in, and you know the rest. Got kicked out, and that was the end of that.” Lance studies him for a moment. Talking to Lance had never been this easy, there was usually a hard edge to their conversations, or a competitive feel to the air. However, they were ignoring a certain topic.  
“Why are you mad at me about the druid thing?” Keith’s voice came out steady and calm. Lance sighed, and thought for a moment before he responded.   
“I’m not actually mad at you. I just… don’t understand why you did it.” Lance’s voice is small, and he curls in on himself in his chair.   
“You’re my teammate, was I just supposed to let that happen?” Lance didn’t respond at that, so Keith kept going. “I don’t really remember it too well, but I remember enough to say that I don’t think I did anything wrong.” Lance locked eyes with Keith for a moment, then let out a shaky sigh.   
“But you hate me.”   
“No, I don’t. I think you can be annoying at times, but I don’t hate you.” Lance looked at Keith, probably trying to decipher if he was telling the truth or not. When Lance was satisfied that Keith wasn’t lying to him, then stood up.   
“Well, I’m going to try to get a little bit more beauty sleep. You should, too, Mullet. You need it.” Lance waltzed out of the kitchen, his footsteps bouncing off the empty walls. Keith smiled to himself, and started to leave himself.


	7. Gris

On all accounts, breakfast should of went better than it did.   
    Keith assumed that since he and Lance sort of bonded last night that things wouldn’t turn toxic. Sure, they didn’t have an in depth discussion about everything that happened, but they at least talked a little about it. He thought that Lance might even be sheepish, or a little quieter than normal. Or, if that didn’t happen, Keith thought that Lance would be normal around him. Maybe lightly joke about his hair, or start up a banter up with him like he did before.Talk to Pidge and call her names, or cuddle Hunk. He knew Lance would still feel tired, but in the back of Keith’s mind he hoped that Lance at least had been able to fall asleep after their late night talk. Keith had high hopes for breakfast.   
    But, of course, it didn’t go that way.   
    Keith was the last one to arrive at breakfast. He usually was the one who arrived last, but he was pretty sure that no one expected him any earlier. Before he walked into the dining hall, he could hear the light chatter of voices, he could pick out individual tones and he noticed the happy edge to all of their voices. He smiled to himself, that his friends were happy, even when they were fighting a space war, even when the situation was dire. He walked into the dining hall, and towards his seat. He usually sat next to Lance, but that seat was taken by Hunk. Keith could never figure out why he and Lance sat next to each other, in fact, it usually just caused more arguments. Still, there was a sting of pain seeing that his seat was taken, which he ignored for now. He was out for awhile, it made sense that the seating arrangements might have changed. He moved to sit down next to Pidge. The room grew quiet with his arrival, which Keith stiffly noticed. It was almost like he interrupted their breakfast, rather than being involved in it. Shiro was the first to disrupt the weird atmosphere.   
    “Hey, it’s good to have you back.” Allura nodded, and gave a warm smile to Keith. Hunk chimed in.  
    “Yeah, man! It’s been weird without you.” Keith smiled at Hunk. Even though Keith wasn’t the most talkative in the group, he usually didn’t say anything at all, it was a calming feeling to know that he mattered to the group. He looked to Pidge, who nodded at him, and then she went into all her questions she had for him.  
    “Since no one's been in the pod for as long as you did, I had some questions about it. When Shiro had his injury and was in there,” Shiro stiffened a bit, “he remembered somethings that he couldn’t before. Did you experience this? Did you have any weird dreams? What did it feel like? Can you-?”  
    “Pidge, you can ask these questions later, let Keith have a normal breakfast.” Allura cut her off before her questions got too out of hand. Pidge slumped in her chair, and gave Keith a look that said, “You’d better answer these questions later.” Keith smirks to himself, and turns to give Allura an appreciative smile. Given Pidge’s knowledge seeking ways, he should’ve expected her to wonder about the healing pod’s affect on his mind and subconscious. Allura nodded at Keith, and then addressed the group.   
    “Now that Keith is back, we will have to go back to the training and missions.” There are groans from both Hunk and Pidge, but surprisingly not Lance. Keith peared over at Lance, who was slouching in his sit, one hand resting on his cheek, and he was poking at his food goo. His eyes were glued to his plate, a small pout playing on his face. Keith put Lance’s  uncharacteristically quietness in the back of his mind and tuned back into Allura. “...think we should jump right into a mission, but we should get back to training. I will allow one more day of rest, for your sake, Keith, but then we will all go back to the daily schedule.” Shiro nodded along with Allura (Omg, you two, just get married already.) “Does that sound good?” Hunk nods, and Pidge grumbles, but agrees to the plan. Even though Keith loves training, he knows he shouldn’t be training right now. He doesn’t feel as achy as last night, but still doesn’t feel well enough to spend hours training.   
    “I’m surprised Keith is fine with not killing himself on the training deck. That’s all he ever does anyway. What other hobbies do you even have?” Lance makes this jab at Keith in a small voice, not his usual bostoriuos voice. This grabs everyone’s attention, since it’s pretty clear that Lance is being salty and weird about something. Keith just gets confused, and voices his confusion with a slightly avagrated tone.  
    “What?”  
    “You heard me, Mullet, what do you even do besides train? You’re like a robot.” The way Lance was saying this felt unnatural to him. It sounded so defeated, quiet, but still a hint of venom to his words. He clearly wasn’t starting up their usually banter, or their casual rivalry, rather Lance was clearly trying to pick an actual fight with Keith. Lance was facing away from basically everybody. He was looking at the doorway, not making eye contact with anyone in the room. He was still slumped in his chair, but now a scowl replaced his face. Everyone now openly stared at Lance, their gazes shifting from Lance to Keith each passing second. Shiro just stared at Keith, waiting for his response. Keith didn’t want to disappoint Shiro, but the urge to go fully into it was ever so present. Keith took a deep breath, and ignored him and went back to his food goo, which tasted like shit for some reason today. After a few seconds, Keith could feel Lances gaze on him. No one dared to talk, so Lance to took the opportunity to open his big mouth again.   
    “Not even gonna say anything? Wow, being in the pod made you soft.” Keith kept eating his goo and kept his eyes there on his plate. His hand was shaking from the effort it took not to snap back at Lance. What was his deal anyway? What about last night? You could probably hear a pin drop it was quiet, everyone was stunned in silence, or, in Pidge’s case, waiting for a fight to break out. Lance’s words were so abrasive, but his voice was so quiet and small. “I’m talking to you, you can at least look at me.” Keith looks and glares at him, which Lance is taken aback by, since his eyes grow wide. Keith can’t keep it to himself, sorry Shiro.  
    “I spent two weeks in a pod because I saved your ass.” Lance cringed, but he straightened up in his chair. A fire behind his blue eyes, hurt and the want to hurt were blazing in his eyes. “The least you could do is be decent to me and you could of fucking showed up yesterday when I woke up.” Shiro muttered something that sounded like a warning towards Keith, which he promptly ignored. Lance raised his voice, this time louder and more confident.   
    “I didn’t ask you to kill yourself! No one here did! Shiro asked us to be more like a team and get along better so what do you do? You do the extreme!”  
    “At least I did something! You’ve been the one that’s been acting really weird, ignoring me or being like this.” Keith gestures to Lance. Keith doesn’t mention last night, since that was a rare nice moment with Lance that he enjoyed. “Plus, I didn’t kill myself, I’m still here, aren’t I?” He was practically yelling at this point, while Lance was coming close to matching his volume.   
    “You know how horrible it was to see you do that? You know how bad it was for the team?” Keith stared at him for a second, and then with clenched teeth he spit out his response.   
    “If it was so horrible, then I won’t save you next time. I’ll watch you die and do nothing. Do you want that? Do you wish that would have happened?” The air in the room clearly changed from shock from Lance’s outburst to shock from Keith’s words. Keith could feel Shiro’s gaze, disappointment, and horrid on him. Lance just looked at him, the anger quickly diapanting into a thin layer of sadness, hurt, and regret. He must of realized what he was saying, but Hell if Lance McClain was about to go back on his word.   
    “Fuck you.” Lance said, notably less loud and harsh, but still with a bite in it. Lance stood up, and stalked out of the room with his shoulders tight and his hands bound up in fists. The room was still as quiet as before. Keith kept his eyes on where Lance had just walked out. He had the option of running after him, trying to apologize, but he didn’t. He stayed in his chair for now. Pidge was the first to speak up.   
    “That went about as well as I expected.” Shiro muttered something to Pidge, but Keith didn’t hear it. He left his plate of food good half eaten and left the hall. Fuck it if his body wasn’t ready for heavy training, he’s going to do it anyway. 

 

    Five hours later of cursing at drones and having his ass handed to him, Keith’s body gave out. It collapsed out from beneath him, leaving him a sweaty pile on the ground. He supposed he was just proving Lance’s point that all he literally does is train, but he couldn’t care less. He noticed a few people walk by-- Shiro and Allura, he was pretty sure-- but he didn’t stop. Every bone, muscle, cell in his body ached with pain and over usage. He knew it was stupid to train like this, but he couldn’t help it. He just didn’t understand why him saving a life would be so horrible. He didn’t understand why Lance was so mad at him. He didn’t understand why Lance would be fine with him at night but absolutely want to kill him in the morning. He didn’t understand why he felt the need to fight Lance that morning. He just didn’t understand anything at this point. He knows he will have to apologize for his words sooner or later, and, hopefully, Lance would apologize as well. Keith did plan on talking to Coran about the dreams today. Last night, after his talk with Lance, it was fine. No nightmares of any kind, but Keith isn’t that naive. The nightmare will come back, they always do.   
    Even though his whole entire being screamed at him not to move, he slowly got up and left the training room. He went to the med bay, the most likely place where Coran would be. Which he was right, Coran seemed to be sorting medical supplies. Keith knocked on the wall to alert Coran of his presence, which the old man turned around and a smile was plastered on his face.  
    “Keith, my boy! What bring you to this part of the castle?” Keith went closer to Coran, and sat himself into a chair nearby the golly man. The movement made his body want to commit suicide, but e put the pain away for now.   
    “I was actually looking for you. I have a problem that I thought you could help solve.” Coran stroked his mustache like he was in a cartoon (...) and stopped what he was sorting. He came closer to Keith and looked at him.  
    “Well, ok! Lay it on me, my dear chap!” Keith could never get old of Coran’s weird language.   
    “I know I’ve only been out of the pod for a day, but last night and while I was in the pod I’ve had these weird dreams.” Coran nodded along, and encouraged Keith to continue. “I wouldn’t come to you if I thought they were normal nightmares, but they don’t make sense. I was wondering if you knew anything about it or if you had some medical stuff that could help.” Coran studied him for minute, then looked down onto the ground.   
    “I was afraid something like this may happen. The druids are horrible creatures, and if they don’t kill you, they can still hurt you in the future. Whatever druid you fought, and when it blasted you, it decided to harm your dreams. Make the nightmares that much worse. Druids can have weird powers over dreams, make people dream their own death, or friends deaths, anything really.” Keith took this in. So this was still a part of the druid thing, he can’t even get away from it in his sleep.   
    “My dreams aren’t anything that gruesome, they’re just weird. I dreamt about a family I don’t even know being pulled away from me.” Coran is silent after this, thinking. Looking deep within Keith for an answer. Slowly, Corn talks.   
    “Do you know if Lance is having the same problem as you?” A voice rings back in his mind about last night and why Lance couldn’t sleep. He swallows a lump in his throat, already not liking where this is going.   
    “What does Lance’s dreams have to do with this.” Coran, just as slowly, begins to explain.  
    “It has been known that two people who have been hit by a druid, or come in contact with one, and lived, have switched dreams or nightmares. It’s a rare sighting, but it can happen. And, given Lance’s love for his family, it would make sense that his dreams and nightmares would be based off of his family.” Keith just looks at Coran. Hoping that he is joking. He doesn’t want Lance’s dreams, not only is that a huge invasion privacy, but he just doesn’t want to know what he dreams about. “That would also mean, that Lance has whatever you dream about.” His thoughts go from feeling bad about having Lance’s dreams to wanting to vomit. Panic races through his blood. Keith’s dreams have been heavily based off the Galra because of that knife and Ulaz. What if Lance pieces it together? Coran notices the panic spread across Keith’s face, and quickly talks.  
    “This doesn’t last forever, just a few days or weeks. But, I would tell Lance about it. Soon. Now, my young boy.” Keith glances at Coran. He’s right, Lance needs to know. Lance can’t sleep, that was evident last night, and knowing why his dreams are so different might help. Keith lets out a shaky breath, and nods.   
    “Ok, I’ll tell him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Soooooo it's been months since I've done anything to this. I am really sorry! I'll try to update weekly, but life went to shit these past few months. My mom just had this huge procedure done, stem cell transplant, and she went through a lot of chemo. I had to take care of her, so I didn't have time to write. I am still doing this, don't worry, but my family comes first. Thanks for understanding! And thanks for reading!!  
> In other news, this story is finally getting to the point where some shit can happen between them, so yay!!!


	8. Bleu Sarcelle

“Why did I even say that? What possessed me to say that? What the hell is wrong with me?”   
    Lance walked through the castle, mumbling to himself. Of course he felt bad about this morning, Keith just woke up and what did Lance have to do? Fuck it up by being an ass. In the moment even Lance could tell Keith was biting his tongue, tying not to give into Lance. But Lance pushed too far and now they’re back at square one. The night before was great, Lance talked about his family and Keith actually seemed interested. They were getting somewhere with their friendship, but then Lance ruined it all. He had avoided everyone for the next few vargas, but Hunk had managed to find him. Lance thought about running away from the big guy, but couldn’t do that to Hunk. He hung his head and waited for the scolding to begin. Hunk jog up to him, and walked next to him in silence. Hunk didn’t say anything, but gave him side glances. The silence probably wasn’t bad or noticble to Hunk, but the longer it went on for Lance the worse he felt.   
    “Just say it.” Lance broke through it. Hunk looked at him, but Lance’s eyes were fixed on the floor.   
    “Say what?”   
    “That I’m a horrible teammate for saying that to Keith. I wasn’t there when he woke up, and then I was an ass to him for no reason.” His voice was small, barely audible.   
    “Lance, you're not a bad teammate. We’re all stressed, and living in a spooky, huge castle isn’t helping anyone’s nerves. It’s understandable, but I think you need to apologize.” Lance looked up at Hunk, and scoffed.   
    “He needs to apologize! He said-”  
    “He said some bad things too, but one of you needs to do it first, and from what I hear, Keith isn’t dealing too well either.”   
    “What do you mean ‘he isn’t dealing too well?’” He raises his hands and finger quotes around the words. “What, is he at the training deck killing himself?”  
    “From what I hear from Shiro, yes.” Something twists violently within Lance. Of course Keith would be at the training deck, even if he shouldn’t be. Lance picked at the fact that Keith trains a lot at breakfast, but Lance never thought Keith would be dumb enough to train right after being in a pod for two weeks. “So, for Keith’s physically health, I think you should apologize.”  
    “Am I supposed to waltz in there, when he’s probably been pretending that the droids are me, and just say, ‘Hey, I know I said some shit, but so did you so truce?’ How well do you think that’ll go over?”   
    “I’m sure he won’t hurt you, I hope.” Worry catches on the edge of Hunk’s words, but he continues. “And don’t say something like that. Be smart about it.” Lance nods, and keeps walking with Hunk. Hunk raises his eyebrows, and then clears his throat. Lance catches on.  
    “What, now?”  
    “Yes, now. Go! Shoo!” Hunk waves his hands at Lance, and Lance keeps walking. He looks behind him to see that Hunk is still encouraging him. Lance sighs, and starts to make his way over to the training deck. He takes all the turns down the dark corridors of the castle, and soon he’s approaching his destination. He begins to think of ways to start this conversation, but nothing seems right. He puts it in the back of his mind, thinking that he’ll wing it and it’ll be fine. The closer he gets to the training deck, he expect to hear the sounds of clashing swords or something, but it’s dead silent. Worry and fear start to creep into his core. What if he collapsed? Or what if Keith heard Lance coming and was planning to jump him? Lance goes into a fast walk, and enters into the room.   
    The training room is completely empty. Lance spots Keith’s red, cropped jacket on the floor, but other than that there’s no sign of Keith. Lance sighs, and walks out the doors.   
    “Ok,” Lance whispers to himself, “If I were Keith, and thank God I’m not, where would I go after training.” He reasoned that Keith would be sweaty and would want to take a shower. Lance makes his way to the showers, but finds it empty as well. Next logical place is Keith's room, but either it’s empty or Keith isn’t answering the door. Somehow Lance thinks that it’s not the latter, so he begins to walk around the castle, thinking that he might just run into Keith. When that doesn’t happen, Lance goes to the only other place that he hasn’t looked, the med bay. When he arrives, Keith isn’t there, but Coran is. Coran looks like he’s finishing up cleaning or sorting the medical supplies. Lance walks in and clears his throat. Coran looks up, and smiles one of his smiles that sometimes is covered by his moustache.  
“Lance! How are you? Are you hurt, since you’re in the med bay?” Lance shakes his head.   
“No, I was looking for Keith, any ideas?” Coran looks at him for a moment, opens his mouth to say something, but closes it. Finally, Coran says something.  
“Sorry, my boy, haven’t seen him. I have no idea where he is and what he may be doing.” Coran smiles, and then quickly turns back to whatever he’s doing. Lance blinks, and then shrugs it off. Coran is always weird, so it’s normal of him to be like that, right? Lance walks out, and then decides to go to others to try to find Keith. The only person that could know Keith’s whereabouts would be Shiro, so he goes to his room. Shiro, unlike some people, is in his room, and looks at Lance.  
“Have you seen Keith?” He says before Shiro can even get anything out.    
“He was training when I last saw him, even though he shouldn’t be doing that-”  
“Yeah, he isn’t there. So you don’t know where he is?” Lance’s impatience begins to show, but Shiro ignores it for now.  
“No, then I don’t know where he is. Why do you need to find him?” Lance sighs, and walks away while he states his answer.   
“I think you know why.” He hears Shiro’s doors close behind him, and he promptly gives up his search. It’s not that he doesn’t want to talk to Keith, well he doesn’t but he knows he has to, but he simply can’t find the guy. He spent half a varga trying to find the elusive red paladin, and he’s tired of looking. He makes his way to the observation room, because that’s the only place Lance can think clearly. That, and in water, but the pool on the castle is, well, weird. The observation room has a huge window that allows one to see anything out there, the beautiful colors and swirls in space, and the the stars that stand out in dazzling whites and blues and golds. Lance goes into the observation room, and settles himself on the couch. He stares at space, ever so big, ever so scary. When he first got the castle, it terrified him about how far away he was from home, but now? He doesn’t notice it. He knows he’s far away, but it doesn’t bother him as much as it used to. He misses Earth, and his family, but he has other things to worry about. He’s in a war, and that comes first. When this is all over, when Zarkon is defeated, and they can take a break, he will go home. He will see his family. He will be home again. He knows he will. Lance hears the doors open, and quickly reasons that the only person that would be here to find him would be Hunk. Lance begins to ramble.  
    “Hunk, before you say anything, I did try. I just can’t find him, he’s like the loner ninja, he’s always alone and you can’t find him. So I’ll talk to Keith when I see him, I guess.” There’s a pause, and then someone who definitely isn’t Hunk talks.   
    “I’m a loner ninja?” Lance jumps about five feet in the air from where he was sitting on the couch. He turns to see Keith laughing to himself in the doorway. He doesn’t have his jacket on and his hair is in a tight ponytail, which is doing things to Lance but he shoves it down inside him. His hair is a little greasy, probably from intense training. Lance stutters from the fright of seeing him.   
    “Dude! What the hell? Where were you! Why are you here?” Keith is apparently not done laughing, and Lance just glares at him until Keith stops. Still, seeing Keith quietly laugh and smile is… weird. He usually doesn’t smile, and whenever he does Lance is always drawn to it for some reason.   
    “Ok, sorry.” He stops laughing and crosses the room to Lance and sits down next to him. “I was looking for you actually. I need to talk to you about something-”   
    “No, let me talk first.” Keith looks at Lance with a weird expression, but nods at Lance. He leans back onto the couch, and gives Lance room to talk. Lance takes a shaky breath, already wishing he thought about what to say. “So, these two weeks have been hard on all of us, and like, I didn’t know how to deal with it, so I never did. I just tried to forget about it, and pretended that nothing was wrong. Now that you’re back,” Lance looks at Keith, who seems to to biting his lip for some reason, but Lance keeps on talking and doesn’t look at Keith anymore. “I had to deal with it. And I didn’t deal with it well. I snapped at you for no reason and I’m sorry. I’m sorry for not being there when you got out of the pod, and I’m sorry for not always treating you the best. I’m sorry-”  
    “Lance.” Lance snaps his attention back to Keith. He has relaxed into the couch, but still has his arms crossed over his chest. “It’s fine, I don’t blame you. I’m sorry for the way I acted this morning as well. We’re fine, it’s cool.” Lance slowly wraps his head around those words, and nods after a moment.   
    “Yeah, we’re cool.” Lance puts his fist up, intending it to be a fistbump, but Keith just looks at it and doesn’t raise his fist at all. Lance begrudgingly puts his fist down, and stares at it. “Well, if that’s it! That went really quick!” Lance makes a move to get up, but Keith starts talking before he could really move.  
    “That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.” Lance gasps at him, a little overdramatically. He sits back down, and looks to Keith, who is now looking away from him. His body language is completely closed off.   
    “What? You didn’t want to apologize for the morning?” Keith glances at him, but quickly looks away.   
    “No, I did want to. But this is more important.” Keith looks to Lance and wow his eyes are intense. Ok, Lance can’t look Keith in the eye right now because of reasons. “I don’t know how to start this conversation, and I don’t know how you’ll take it.” Somethings twists in Lance. Anticipation? Hope? Hope for what? Lance leans in a little closer, to show his full attention is on Keith. Keith stiffens at that movement, but continues. “So, I guess I’ll just say it. God, this is so fucked up.” Lance takes in every movement that Keith makes. The way his eyes dart around the room. A light blush that dusts on his cheeks. Warm butterflies take over Lance’s stomach, and he waits for Keith to say it. “When I was in the pod, and last night I had these two dreams that didn’t make sense.” Wait, this is about Keith’s dreams? Something drops in his stomach, but he can’t understand why. He doesn’t know why he expected the topic to be different “I didn’t want them to interfere with our missions, so I went to Coran. He told me, uhh..” Keith stops there, and looks at Lance with those eyes. Lance always wondered how that color was even possible, it was purple? Or Purple with gray mixing in with them? “Lance, what I’m about to tell you, you can’t overreact, ok?” Lance smirks at him.  
    “Keith, when do I ever overreact?” Keith just frowns at him, and Lance sighs and gives in to it. This is serious, he can tell. “Ok, I won’t. What is it?”  
    “You and I switched dreams.”   
    “Dude, what?!” Lance basically screamed it. Nope. This was a prank. Keith was pulling his leg, or a really weird dream.   
    “You just said you wouldn’t overreact…” Keith put his head in his hands. Lance stood up in front of Keith and began yelling anything that would make what Keith just said reasonable.   
    “Nope, this is a prank. Ha ha, nice one. That wouldn’t even be possible, since switching dreams is impossible!”   
    “Coran said that there can side effects to coming in contact with a druid. Having bad dreams or, in our case, switching dreams, can be one of them.” Keith mumbled through his hands.   
    “No, no this isn’t true. I can’t deal with all this.” Keith looked up at him, and moved the strands of hair that wasn’t in his ponytail out of his face.  
    “Haven’t you noticed the weird dreams for the past two weeks?” Lance stalls for a moment. He only talked to Hunk about them, and they were terrible and strange. And if Keith is right, then he has Keith’s dreams, or nightmares. Lance couldn’t accept this, he had to fight this, for his own sanity.   
    “Yeah, but that has nothing to do with anything!” Keith looks back down again and mumbles.  
    “Those are mine.” It’s barely audible, and Keith is obviously embarrassed about it. Lance suddenly stops fighting it. Keith wouldn’t play him like this, and he’s sure this must be hard. Lance sits back down next to Keith, and looks at him. He came down on himself, his back hunched and his head in his hands. Some messy strands of hair falls in front of his face. “Look, I don’t want to deal with this either, but we can’t ignore. We have to fix it.”  
    “How?” Keith turns a bit to look at Lance..   
    “I don’t know. Coran said it just goes away after awhile. I hope he’s right.”   
    “So, if I have your dreams… Dude your dreams are fucked up.” Keith turns away from Lance so he is literally is looking at a wall. “Like, you should probably talk to someone about them. I haven’t able to sleep well since the first one. And if you have my dreams, you must dream about how great it is to be me. Getting all the ladies, must’ve been weird for you to experience that.” Keith’s back stiffened at that last comment, almost to the point where Lance thought he actually offended the hot head. Keith turns back towards him and completely opens his body language.   
    “You do actually know what your dreams, or nightmares, are about, right?”   
    “About being awesome. My nightmares must be about not using my skin care or having bad skin. Am I right?” Keith just looked at him with a face that said, ‘You’re an idiot.’ Lance then realized that there’s no point in lying to him when he actually dreamt about this shit. Lance looked out the window into space, and began talking. “Ok, so they’re not about that, but I don’t want to talk about that kind of stuff. Can you just keep those dreams to yourself.”   
    “Lance, I don’t know anyone in your dreams and it still feels like a piece of me is lost afterwards. If one of us needs to talk about their dreams, it’s you, not me.” Lance flinched at that. Those kinds of dreams with his family were really personally, like he still hasn’t told Hunk about them. And now Keith knows, the last person he would want to know.   
    “Not you? Jesus, from your dreams I would think you’re deathly afraid of this war. Or the Galra. Or being a Galra soldier.” Keith’s eyes widen at that last comment, which Lance picked up on. “What?” Keith brushed him away, but Lance persisted and scooted closer to Keith. “Dude, what?”  
    “How about this: I don’t talk about your dreams, you don’t talk about mine.” Keith’s voice had a bit of edge in it, but Lance had heard it all before. Keith always talked like he was on the verge of killing something. “We just need to find a solution to this problem, and then never talk about it again.” Lance dropped it, but kept the fact that Keith is afraid of being a Galra soldier in the back of his mind. Why would that even be something to worry about?   
    “Ok, how do you suggest we do that?”   
    “Talk to Coran or Allura? It is supposed to just go away. I don’t want the whole team knowing.” Lance nodded at that. The last thing he needed was Pidge prodding at his brain. “Coran already knows about it, so my guess is to go to him first.”   
    “Paladins, we are approaching the coordinates where Ulaz sent us. Please come to the deck. I know I said that we’d take a break, but this seems important.” Allura’s voice rang out over the speakers. Lance and Keith shared a glance, before Keith got up and walked away from Lance, not even bothering to wait for the other. Lance sighed to himself.  
    “So much for a break. Go Team Voltron…”


	9. Noir et Rouge

Lance arrives at the deck a few ticks after Keith, who looks on edge. His posture is as stiff as a board, and he’s obviously dwelling on something. Lance is pretty sure that Keith’s thinking about the conversation they just had, hell, even he’s still thinking about it. Like, what the fuck? Why did the universe hate him so much? He would be fine with switching dreams with anybody except Keith. He didn’t need Keith knowing all his deepest fears and insecurities through his dreams. Subconsciously, Lance knows that he’s been having Keith’s dreams for two weeks, and Keith’s only had two of his dreams, meaning Lance knows a lot more about Keith than he’d like. The weird part was that the nightmares were always about the Galra, and whatever weren’t nightmares were extremely boring dreams. One night, he had a dream where he was just floating in space. That’s it. Just floating around, completely content with it. Lance breathes a sigh through his nose, and focuses his mind on the mission.      
    Ulaz, the Galra that Shiro vouched for and then saved all of their lives, had left coordinates to the base of The Blade of Marmora. It was a shock that there were Galra fighting against the Empire, but in retrospect it makes sense. Not all Galra could be bloodthirsty, mindless slaves to Zarkon. Allura, however, refused to believe this. She had protested every bit of the way, stating that you can’t trust a Galra. Everyone understood why she had the distaste for them, but this could prove useful to Voltron and defeating the Galra Empire. What better way to fight the Galra than with a Galra? Lance crosses his arms, and listens in to the conversation at hand.  
“Coran, how soon until we get to the Blade of Marmora’s base?” Shiro says, standing a few paces away from Coran.  
“Based on the coordinates that Ulaz gave us, we should be there within a few doboshes.” Lance still doesn’t get the whole time thing yet. What are doboshes, again? Ticks are kind of like seconds, and vargas are similar to hours. Are doboshes larger or smaller than vargas? Are they like days? Wait, they’re like minutes, aren’t they? Whatever, he’ll get it one of these… quintants? Pidge and Hunk start up a conversation to Lance’s left.  
“I can’t wait to see it! I mean, they were able to fold space time, and that was just at an outpost!” Pidge says enthusiastically. Even if Lance doesn’t understand the whole science-y thing with the outpost, he had to say, that outpost was pretty cool. It seems like months ago they were there, with everything happening in between. Hunk hums to himself, and rubs his stomach.  
“The space taco, it left us too soon.” Hunk’s stomach then growls, loud enough for everyone to hear. Lance chuckles to himself. Hunk, the man with the bottomless stomach. What a guy. Pidge chimes in, agreeing half-heartedly with Hunk.  
“Well, sure.. But my point is imagine how amazing their home base will be!” Hunk nods, and looks up to the ceiling.  
“Exactly! It could take on any shape! Like a space jelly donut, or long like a space eclair, or a space cheese blintzes with cherry sauce on top. Maybe a little dusting of powdered sugar, that’s the stars.” Is he imagining food as the shape of a space station? I love this man. Lance thinks of the same foods that Hunk says, and then he realizes how hungry he is for a good earth breakfast. His stomach gives a little growl, and he voices his complaint.  
“Aww, now I’m hungry for breakfast.” He was expecting Hunk’s retort or apologize, but Keith’s voice cuts through it all.  
“Guys, this is a serious mission.” Jeez, what crawled into him and died. Keith was fine when he and Lance were talking a few minutes ago, what changed?  “We need to focus.” Lance makes the not-so-smart decision to mock Keith.  
“We need to focus.” He makes a face that Keith has never made, and draws out every word. This probably would get the two into fight, but Coran calls out that the base is in range, and that gets everyone’s attention. What gets their attention even more is where the base is located. Two black holes, and a giant blue star. Great. Just great. Because they’re lives couldn’t get any more difficult. How did the Blade even find this place? How did they even manage to build a base here? Too many questions, no one to answer them. Hunk makes the allenagy of nuking a frozen burrito, which make Lance hungry, again.  
“Now I’m hungry for lunch!” Can’t they go to a space mall and find some burritos? Or garlic knots? Or anything that wasn’t food goo?  
“Guys, quiet!” Keith yells a little too aggressively. “Coran, where is the base located?” Turns out the base is in between those three things. How are we going to get there?  
“The perfect defensive position.” Pidge says.  
“Or the perfect trap.” Allura says. Seems like an elaborate trap if it was one. How would the Blade have time to build such a base with such short notice? Hunk expresses his worries on the base. They should find a happy medium, go in there with caution, since it could be trap. But it seems like such a waste to just not go in there. Keith clearly disagrees with Hunk, and he yells across the room, grabbing everyone’s attention.  
“What are you talking about? We have to go in, this is the whole reason why we came out here.” Wow, he’s loud. Why is he being so loud? “There is no other option.” Keith is acting… strange. Sure, he is sometimes loud and aggressive, but not like this. Why is he so set about this place? Lance can practically see the stream rolling off of him, and everyone is eyeing him suspiciously. Lance makes slow movements, raising his arms.  
“Ok, jeez. Calm down.” Keith frowns at him, but Lance thinks he got the memo. Or at least he’s not yelling anymore. What’s stressing him out? The dreams? The base? He wasn’t like this when they were talking, so what’s going on? Wait, why does Lance care? Nope, Keith’s problems are his own. Not caring anymore. Shiro gives Keith a look, and Lance has the strange urge to call out Keith like they were in kindergarten and say, ‘oooo, Keith is in trouble!’ he doesn’t, of course.  
The screen buzzes to life, and a language that Lance doesn’t understand comes onto the screen. A female, robotic voice pops to life, asking them to identify themselves. Shiro, in his powerful, dad, voice says who they are and that they were sent by Ulaz. Then, the waiting game begins. Lance didn’t realize that the Blade didn’t have to let them in, that they could actually just gun them down. The tense silence finally lifts when the female voice says that two may enter, but to come unarmed. Shiro will definitely be one of the two to enter. Allura voices her concern to why they come unarmed, but Lance is thinking more on the fact that he wants to go. They need to form an alliance with the Blade, and Lance has a certain type of charisma which could help. Coran says something about the route to the base and how long it’s open, which Lance tunes out since he’s trying to think of a compelling reason why he should go the base. He needs to think of something slick, cool, and thought invoking. He’s got it. Shiro walks near him, and Lance springs to life.  
“So, any thoughts on who’s gonna join you on this little mission?” Lance rests his hand on his chin. “I’m thinking things might get a little hot, so you’re gonna want someone who can stay cool.” He can feel Keith’s frown on him, but nevertheless, Lance is proud of that play on words.  
“You’re right.” Lance grins to himself. Shiro and Lance, doing a mission. This is going to be lit! But, then Shiro opens his mouth again. “Keith, you’re coming with me.” Lance goes wide-eyed. Did Shiro not understand the part about ‘staying cool?’ Or did Shiro not witness Keith’s little outburst a minute ago?  
“But, Keith’s a hothead!” Lance turns to face Keith, and stares him right in the eyes, which Keith gives an equally heated look to Lance. “He’s probably going to shot first and ask questions later!” Lance steps into Shiro’s personal space. Besides, is Keith up for a mission? It’s been a day since he got out of the healing pod, does Shiro not care? “And they won’t be able to answer his questions because they’d be dead!” He ends his little rant with a flourish, and Lance then realizes how far Shiro leaned back, and wow, Lance scale it back a notch. Lance doesn’t say or do anything to scale back, since his pride is on the line. Lance just angrily looks into Shiro’s eyes until Shiro puts his hands on Lance’s shoulders and pushes Lance back a few steps.  
“We haven’t yet separated Zarkon’s link with the black lion, so it has to stay here. And the red lion can withstand the heat from that sun, so yes, it’ll be Keith.” Lance doesn’t take his eyes off Shiro, deciding that he doesn’t really want to see Keith’s or anybody’s reaction to this whole thing. Whatever, just another instance of Shiro favoring Keith. Coran talks about the route to the base, but Lance tunes it all out at this point. He’ll be sitting here for the next two days doing nothing. Lance sighs to himself, and watches Keith and Shiro leave to the red lions hanger. A few minutes later, he watches the red lion fly into the route, and then disappear  
behind the chaos of the black holes and the sun.  
    “Welp, I’m going to find something to eat, since someone made me hungry.” Lance gives a pointed look to Hunk, who just smiles at him. 

 

    Lance’s journal, day 289.  
Today, Shiro and Keith head into uncharted territory. Against everyone’s better judgment, Shiro has brought the hotheaded Keith with him, so they are doomed to fail. Our trusted leader should have brought the best pilot of the bunch, Lance. However, Shiro is blinded by their past and cannot look for the future. They head into a possible enemy base, and should be back within two days, well less than two days, it’s been a few hours. The leader and the loner may face danger, but no one knows because we’ve lost all contact with them since they left. Hopefully, Shiro will live to see his favorite pilot again, Lance, since Lance is so much better than Keith and-

 

“Lance, why are you writing on a napkin?”  
Lance jumps at the sound of Pidge’s voice. He looks down at the napkin he was writing on.  
    “I was... making a journal?” Pidge comes closer to look at the napkin.  
    “On a napkin?” Lance just nods. Pidge reads the first lines on the napkin. “Have you been counting the days? Has it really been 289 days?”  
“Oh, no. I just picked a number.” Pidge gives Lance a blank stare. “What? I thought it would add to the drama!”  

 

After a whole day of doing nothing but goofing off, Lance decides to sleep for a few vargas. He did manage to calculate how much time was left with no help, which he still feels a sense of pride about. And when he left the deck they were beginning to connect with Red’s sensors. It’s a little weird and boring without Shiro and Keith. It’s kind of like the two weeks where Keith was in the healing pod, but now Shiro is gone too. It’s temporary, as Lance knows, but it’s still eerie. Lance yawns, and enters his room. He has to think, what are they doing right now? Maybe they’re having high tea with a bunch of Galra. Or trash talking Zarkon. Whatever, he’ll hear all about it when they return. Lance quickly puts on his face mask, and then sets himself down on the bed. He can’t stop his mind of at least wondering if something bad is happening. What if they’re fighting, or need help? There would be no way of knowing. Lance sighs to himself. He can’t think that way. Shiro and Keith can take care of themselves, and he’s pretty sure the Blade wouldn’t just out right attack them. ...Right? Lance’s last thoughts before drifting off to sleep are worries of what might actually be happening at that base. 

Lance wakes up, and in the first time in a long time, he doesn’t have any dreams.  
Like none. He dreamt of nothing.  
Lance quickly realizes this must be because Keith wasn’t asleep, so they couldn’t actually switch dreams. Which makes Lance uneasy. Did the Blade not offer beds to Keith and Shiro, because Lance didn’t have a flicker of a dream. Meaning Keith didn’t sleep at all. Lance shakes his head, there might be another explanation. Maybe the blade offered Shiro and Keith to sleep right when they got to the base. Or maybe this whole switching dreams thing doesn’t work when the two are a far ways away from each other. Lance shakes off his unease, and heads to the deck. He then proceeds to waste away the vargas, talking to Hunk and Pidge. Chatting with Allura and Coran. He tries to forget the bad feeling in the pit of his stomach. He was in the middle of an intense game of thumb war with Hunk when Allura yelled out that Red was moving. A few things went into lance’s mind. Oh, they’re coming back now. Or perhaps the Blade wanted to see the Red Lion move. Whatever the case, it was almost time for their return, and they needed to get there.  
“We gotta get down there!” Hunk calls out that the path won’t be ready for another five minutes. Lance runs to his seat, and prepares everything. Are they really going to go in there with the Castle? Should he get into his paladin armor?  
“The red lion has started attacking”  
“Wait, what does that mean?” Hunk speaks up, “Why would the lion attack, unless..” Hunk doesn’t finish that sentence, and he’s glad he didn’t. The pit in Lance’s stomach grows. Lance’s mouth goes dry. They all know what that means if Red is attacking. Lance feels so helpless, what can he do? He looks to Allura, who has a determined look upon her face.  
“Allura?” Lance can’t do anything right now. Just hope that everything will be ok. It happened so suddenly, why did it happen? What is happening? Is Keith even alive anymore? How badly hurt is he? He needs to stay alive, Keith just can’t die in that base. Lance just sits in his seat, feeling like he can’t do anything.  
“Everyone stay focused.” Lance tries to focus, but so many thoughts run through his head. Lance should have insisted that he go with Shiro, then Keith wouldn’t be in danger. Or if Keith is… not alive, he should’ve had a nicer last conversation. Nope, Keith is alive! He’s just in danger, that doesn’t mean he’s dead. “Coran,” Allura’s voice rings out, pulling Lance back out of his thoughts. “How much longer until we can get in?”    
“Just a few more ticks, princess.” Lance looks to the screen. A few more ticks, a few more ticks, a few more… Coran starts counting down, Lance hears him from a distance. Lance looks to Allura, why is she so confident? Why did they trust Ulaz? Why did the Blade hurt them? Why couldn’t he-  
“Princess!” Shiro’s voice came. “We’re coming back. And we’re bringing someone you should meet.” A sigh came from Hunk, and everyone loosened up. Cheers were erupted, and Lance sank back in his seat. After a few minutes, Pidge spoke up.  
“Wait,” Everyone looked to Pidge, “If they are alright, then why did the red lion attack the base?”  
“I guess we’ll find out when we ask them.” Allura said, her voice still tight. 

 

Turns out no one had the guts to ask the big, scary Galra what happened on the base. The Galra, Kolivan, is lead by Coran to one of the guest bedrooms in the castle after a few vargas of discussing what to do now, which leaves all the paladins alone in the Red Lions hanger. Lance noticed something a little while ago: Shiro is literally holding Keith up. Like, Keith’s arm is slung around Shiro’s neck. With Kolivan gone, Lance decides to bring up the red lion attacking.  
    “So, what happened in there?” Shiro and Keith look to each other. Both of them don’t answer right away, and Pidge jumps in.  
    “I was pretty confused when Red attacked, and it does look like you’re hurt.” She points to Keith’s shoulder area, which only makes the red paladin stiffen. Shiro sighs, and slowly lets go of Keith’s arm. Keith sits down on Red’s paw to rest.  
    “I think Keith is going to need some time to come to terms with what happened on that base. If you guys could-”  
    “Shiro.” Keith cuts him off. Why are they so serious and somber? If Keith pissed off one of the guards, then just say so. “I’d rather tell them now than later.” The four of them, Pidge, Hunk, Lance, and Allura wait for Keith to start talking. He lets a shaky sigh, and slowly begins.  
    “We were supposed to come unarmed, but I forgot about my blade.” Keith pulls out a large sword that looks very Galra. How could you forget about that? It’s huge. Keith seems to read Lance’s mind and quickly backtracks. “It wasn’t like this, it was a small knife when I went in.”  
    “Knives don’t just turn into swords, Keith.” Pidge comments. He scoffs at Pidge.  
    “I know, I’m getting to that.” Keith sighs again, and puts the sword out in front of him on the ground. “They found it, and it was one of their blades. They accused me of stealing it, which I didn’t. I’ve had that blade for all my life, but they didn’t believe me. Um,” keith stalls for a moment, and looks to Shiro, and he just nods. “That knife is my only connection to my past, who I am. Since it was a Blade of Marmora knife, I thought they would know some answers on why I had that knife in the first place.”  
    “They made Keith go into this Trial of Marmora.” Shiro cut it. “Which, I’ll spare you guys the details.” Keith brings a hand to his shoulder and winces in pain. “But Kolivan said it would either end with knowledge or death.” Shrio stops there, and lets the weight of what he just said go across the room.  
    “Well, since you’re not dead, you learned something, right?” Pidge jumped in. Both Shiro and Keith kept quiet at that. Lance was still hung up on the fact that Keith went into this trial where one of the outcomes could have been death. How desperate was he to learn about this knife? Lance looks at Allura, who has stayed very quiet throughout his whole transaction.  
    “Yeah, I did learn something.” Keith clears his throat. Keith stands up, but holds his arm in place. He looks at each of their faces, landing on Shiro’s for a last second approval. Shiro bows his head, encouraging Keith to move on. What is happening. “I am part Galra.” Keith looks to the ground and starts to mumble. “Somewhere along the lines something must of happened, and I turned that knife into that sword. I don’t know how I did it, and I swear I didn’t know, but I hope to-” Allura walks out. Everyone looks at the door she just left, until Shiro mutters a, ‘I’ll go talk to her.’ Keith sits back down on the paw, and stares his sword. Pidge is the first to talk.  
    “Does that mean your mother is Galra?” Keith looks at her, and it is clear on his face that this topic is the last thing he wants to talk about.  
    “I guess? I knew my dad for a little bit, but then he disappeared. I never knew my mom, so she has to be Galra.” Pidge nods at that, and then after a beat she crosses the threshold to Keith, and kneels down by him. In an act of kindness rarely done by Pidge, she pats him on the back, and mutters something to him that Lance can’t hear. Keith gives a small smile to her, and then Pidge leaves the room. Hunk shuffles with his feet, and when he sees that Keith is looking at him, Hunk nods and gives a large smile. Hunk then walks rather quickly out.  
That leaves Lance. Keith isn’t looking at him, instead looking at the sword that’s laid out in front of him. Lance has a choice, leave or stay. Lance weighs both options, but ultimately decides he should stay a bit longer. Lance goes to Keith and sits next to him, leaning a little bit on Red’s paw. Keith’s attention is still on that blade, so Lance just sits there. They don’t talk, they sit in silence, and all Lance hopes for that the silence is at least comforting to Keith.  
Because, holy shit, Keith is Galra.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was a long one to write, wow. I also had to re-watch that episode a lot, but I'm not complaining. The next three chapters are in Keith's POV, so get ready for that. And thanks for reading!!!!


	10. Rouge et Noir

Sweat stuck uncomfortably to his back. Pain coursed through his veins, making him highly alert of his surroundings, but his energy was draining quickly. He can’t keep this up forever, he knows, and these enemies just never stop. The rooms never end, they were all the same. He was running on fumes, on the thought that all this pain would be somehow worth it. That he would get answers if he managed to survive. He would finally know who he is, a question he has always wondered. Ever since his dad left, ever since the Garrison, ever since the shack in the desert, and especially now, a paladin of voltron. It was the question that drove him towards Shiro, towards the Blue Lion, towards this very moment. He slowly walked through the doors, and low and behold, a room just like the last invades his vision. Every muscle in his body burned with over use, but the pain mostly radiated from his right shoulder, a hot, sharp slice of pain hit him whenever he so much as move his arm. How long has he been here? Time blurred together, the rooms blurred together, all that mattered was survival. Keith watched on as the platforms carry more enemies, one more than before. How many were there now? Keith took a quick count to find that it was 15 of these Blade guys. Keith steadied himself, and started on his track to the middle of the room.  
A Galra started at him as well two others and they met in the middle. Keith let his right arm go limp, trying to stop the throbbing pain that emitted from the shoulder. He was breathing hard, tired from the last room, and looked at the Galra standing before him.  
“Surrender the blade, and the pain will end.”  
    “Never.” Keith croaked out. His resolve was going, everytime these guys asked him to surrender, he actually considered it. Was this all worth it? The Galra that asked him the question looked back at the two other Galra standing behind him. One of them stepped closer to Keith, which Keith took a couple steps back to compensate the space between them.  
“Look, kid.” The Galra said. Keith glanced up at them, their stance was not threatening at all, rather casual. “When are you going to give up? This won’t end, we’re going to kill you if you don’t stop.” The Galra who said this had a more feminine voice, and she held her hand out. Keith assumed that he was supposed to hand the blade over to them. He looked at blade, turning it in the light and watching it gleam. If he were to give up now, what was the point of everything before all this? He would have failed, and lost the one thing that tied him to his family in the process. He couldn’t, anger tugged at his consciousness, at logic.  
He looked back up at the Galra that offered to take the blade and lunged at her. He pinned her to the ground, the impact of landing running through every bone in his body, but he didn’t have long to dwell on the feeling before she shoved him off of her, landing him on the floor and with her on top. He clawed at her, trying and failing to land a hit on her. She reeled her fist back and started throwing punches at Keith’s face and body. Pain erupted everywhere, and Keith could taste the metallicness of blood. Keith wiggled to no end to get out of the range of her punches, but to no success. She kept a hold on him, avoiding his punches with ease. Keith kept a tight grip on his knife, wanting not to let go. One jab to the temple left Keith dazed in pain, tittering on the edge of consciousness for a moment. His head rattled, leaving him with almost incoherent thoughts. His vision started to blur at the edges, and feeling in some of his limbs started to go numb, with bursts of pain exploding every few seconds. Hot tears escaped his eyes as he tried the last thing he could think of. He kicked his legs up, which managed to surprise the Galra enough that Keith shoved her off of himself and crawled away. Before he could actually stand and get his bearings, a hand wrapped around his ankle and dragged him back.  
    He clawed desperately at the floor, trying hard not to go back to being pinned down and the punches. But instead of that, he feels a hand snake under his midsection and pulls him up. Then, he hears a grunt, and his body is thrown across the room. For one glorious moment, Keith is weightless, he’s flying. He’s soaring through the air, for a moment. A second, a little shorter than a tick. That moment doesn’t last long enough. His body lands on the ground, his head knocks painfully on the floor. He rolls away, trying to get away from the Galra, but he ends up rolling towards another Galra, who takes the opportunity to kick his unprotected stomach. He rolls away from that, coughing at the assault. He makes quick time to rise to his feet and backs up. The room spins around him, a dizzying display that makes Keith swallow bak any blood or vomit that may come up. He tries to focus on the task in front of him, but can’t even seem to get his vision correct. A figure approached him fast, and he stepped to the side to escape the attacker. The figure disappeared from Keith limited sight, before rushing towards him once again. He tries to attack the side of the figure with his knife, but he misses and the figure takes hold of his wrist and yanks his arm to his back, twisting his right arm as he does. Pain rips throughout his injured shoulder. Keith goes to his knees and yells out in agony at the pain coming in waves from his shoulder. More tears roll down his face, and he whimpers as the hold on him continues. Keith suddenly feels a clawed hand lightly brush onto his shoulder. The calm before the storm. The light touch leaves, and replaced with a claw that digs in to his wound. Keith screams out, trying to wiggle out of the grip this Galra has on him. The wiggling probably makes it worse, since the claw wiggles with it, stretching him with a seething pain. He sobs at the pain, the agony of his right side.  
    “Surrender the blade, and the pain will end.” 

 

    Keith gasps and bolts up right in his bed. A shaky hand reaches towards his right shoulder, and he grips his shoulder. His grip on reality. He lets his head fall back on the wall and lies there for a few minutes. It was just a dream, but it was pretty close to what actually happened. He forces his breaths to slow down, repeating the mantra of ‘It’s just a dream.’ After the fight or flight response disappears, and his breathing has evened out, Keith allows himself to curl up onto himself. He holds his head in his hands, and pulls his legs up to himself. He sits there for a few minutes, trying to keep his mind empty. ‘Ok,’ he thinks to himself. Keith looks up at the wall. A dream. About himself. About his experience…. Holy shit, does this mean…? Keith throws himself off his bed and races out of the door. If this means what he thinks it means, this could be huge. He knows it’s too early for him to be up, and Keith is soaked in sweat, but he needs to know. He arrives at Lance’s door and begins to knock mercilessly. After a good thirty seconds of pounding on the door, Keith stops and waits for Lance. There’s no way that Lance could sleep after that, in fact, Keith is worrying that he may of woke up the others with the pounding on Lance’s door. After awhile, the door slides open to reveal a wide awake Lance, staring in Keith’s eyes. Lance’s eyes had fear swirling in them, and the bags under them were prominent. Most likely, Lance just got up from his own nightmare. Lance’s expression goes from relief to mild annoyance in two seconds.  
    “It is four in the morning, Keith. What do you want?” His voice is quiet, yet gravelly. Lance is wearing the robe that came with everyone’s rooms, and a light green face mask that seems to be cracking a little.  
    “I had a dream.” Lance stares at him for a minute, like he’s an idiot. Keith then realizes that he must sound and look ridiculous. He ran here in boxers and a t-shirt, and his hair is probably a mess. Keith self-consciously crosses his arms over his chest.  
    “No shit. You’re going to have to elaborate on that.” Keith sighs, and makes a gesture towards Lance’s room. Lance stiffens for a moment, then turns to the side to allow Keith in. Lance’s room looks basically identical to his, but with more things in it. More survineers, just more stuff, more personality. “I suppose this is going to take awhile, right?” It was a question, but Keith gives no response, only a look towards the Cuban boy. Lance sighs, and walks towards the bathroom. “Ok, I’m going to wash the mask off.” Lance closed the door to his bathroom, leaving Keith alone in his room. He stood awkwardly by the door when he finally decided to move. He crossed the room, keeping his footsteps light, to the bed, and sat down.  
The whole room screamed Lance, even if it wasn’t too decorated. On the bedside table there were a few bottles of skin care items. Keith assumed the majority of the skin care was in the bathroom, but for whatever reason there were some left here. Keith took a bottle, popped the cap open and smelled it. It smelt clean? Maybe with a hint of ocean breeze, a little salty, but fresh. The smell calmed Keith’s nerves, still set afire from the nightmare he just had. He didn’t want to analyze it, to really think about it, since he knew he would break down if he did. He tried to avoid telling the team too much of what happened, but at dinner Shiro had filled in the gaps and answered any questions the team had. Keith just sat there, not saying a word while everyone talked about him. Allura continued to glare at him throughout the dinner, and she didn’t even talk at all. Keith put the bottle back down, and leaned back on the bed, until he was laying on the bed the wrong way. He listened to the faint running water in the bathroom, and the constant hum of the Castle. The water stopped, and after a few moments the door opened, Keith titled his head so he could see Lance walk out of the bathroom. When Lance sees Keith, lying on his bed, he stops in his tracks and just flat out stares at him. The two boys continue to have this weird stare down for a few ticks until Keith goes back to a sitting position. Lance slowly walks over to the bed and sits down to the left of Keith.  
“So, you had a dream.” Lance states slowly. Keith sees Lance look over at him in his peripheral, but doesn’t look back at him, favoring looking straight ahead instead.  
“Yes, and it was something that I could only dream of, which makes me think that-”  
    “This whole switching dream thing is over and that we’re back to normal? Yeah, I’m not so sure about that.” Keith looks at Lance, albeit a little confused.  
“Why do you say that?” Lance looks down to his hands.  
“I had a dream about the whole Blade of Marmora thing,” He mumbles out, “it was horrible…”      
“I had a dream about the Blade too.” Keith absentmindedly puts a hand to his shoulder, calling back the pain of the dream, and the pain that actually happened on that base. Lance looks at Keith, and then at his shoulder.  
“Hey,” Lance’s soft voice cuts through to Keith, who slowly locks eyes with him. “It was just a dream, you can take comfort in that.”  
“It was damn close to the reality, though.” Keith rubs at his shoulder. Shiro had convinced him to go into a healing pod for a few hours, but it left a scar. The pain was completely gone, but now Keith had the memory forever marked of his body. Keith shook himself out of this mindset. He would have enough time to brood over this alone without Lance here to witness. “Anyway, we had dreams about similar things, so what does that mean? Maybe one of us went back to normal and the other is still stuck?” Lance looked over Keith’s face for a moment, opened his mouth a few times before he settled and slowly started talking.  
“I doubt that. Maybe nothing new happened and we just switched dreams.”  
“But that means I got your dream and-”  
    “I must've dreamed about that, then.” Lance cut off Keith’s train of thought. Lance quickly looked away, picking at the edge of the bed. “I mean, it’s very recent and it’s horrible what happened, and the whole team is probably thinking about it. It’s not too weird that I dreamed about it, right?”  
“But some of the details of the dream-”  
    “Shiro filled us all in. While you were in the pod, he told us some of the more…” Lance didn’t finish his sentence, and instead let it hang in the air. Of course Shiro would tell all of them exactly what happened. Keith puts his head in his hands, and just sits there contemplating everything. Everyone knows what happened, all the details of it. Everyone knows that he is part Galra. Everyone knows he is part of the enemy, part of the people that they are fighting against. Allura hasn’t even spoken a word to him, not even acknowledged his existence. Pidge is now treating him like a science experiment. Hunk is shying away from him, but also calling him ‘Galra Keith?’ Shiro is being supportive, but even Keith can tell that Shiro is more cautious towards him. Keith lets out a shaky sigh. He has always been Galra, but now he knows. It changed everything. What if they can’t form Voltron because of him? What if they start to suspect that Keith is a Galra spy?  
A tentative hand goes to Keith’s back and starts rubbing slow, small circles onto it. Keith stiffens at it.  
“I know what you’re thinking, and I want you to stop it.” Lance’s voice fills Keith, strong, yet soft at the same time. “This whole Galra thing was a surprise for all of us, and we all need time to accept it, but I promise you, we will all accept you. You aren’t any different from the Keith we all know.” The circles on his back grow a little bigger, covering more range of his back. “It’ll be fine, but you need to accept yourself too.” Keith furrows his brows at that and looks up at Lance, who has a stern look on his face plastered on. “You think that the Galra are all bad, but they’re not. I mean, look at you!” Lance makes a gesture with his other hand at Keith. “You’re fighting with Voltron, you are saving the universe! You’re not destroying it, you’re protecting it! Look at the Blade of Marmora, they are fighting against the Galra empire and they’re Galra! Sure, what they did to you is really bad, but they’re fighting the right person! We are fighting against Zarkon, against anyone who threatens the universe. You being part Galra doesn’t change that, it doesn’t mean that we all hate you now cause that would be a prime example of intergalactic racism. We just need time to adjust.” Lance held Keith's stare, until Keith abruptly left the hand that was on his back, stood up and made his way to the door. Before leaving, he turned slightly.  
“Thank you, Lance.” Lance looked a bit confused, but quickly smiled.  
“Anytime.” Keith nodded, and walked out of the room. He made it to his room, entered, and immediately sat down on his own bed. Lance’s words played back in his mind, and the sincerity Lance seemed to have while saying it. Maybe Lance was right, everything would be fine with time. Then, another thought crossed his mind.  
    Lance’s dream was about Keith getting hurt. In fact, it was a nightmare. Lance had a nightmare about Keith getting hurt. Does that mean Lance cares about him?  
    ….huh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am really sorry I didn't post anything last week, I may try to post something on Friday to make up for that. Also, if I don't post anything for a week, that doesn't mean I've lost interest in this story, but I have a lot going on, or I sometimes just don't feel like writing. But, besides my inability to actually post when I say I will, thanks for reading!


	11. Blanche

To say the least, no one treated Keith the same. At breakfast, Allura still refused to even look at him. He even tried to start a conversation with her, asking her what the plan was and where they were going next, but she ignored him. Kolivan was staying on the castle, which only made things more awkward. Hunk and Pidge continually asked questions about the Blade of Marmora, which Kolivan answered but it only made Allura more stiff and rigid. And then there was Shiro. Even though Shiro was there for the trials, and he saw what Keith had to go through, Shiro wasn’t acting the same either. He wasn’t as distant as Allura, and he didn’t flat out ignore him, but Keith could tell Shiro had an unease about him. Keith really couldn’t blame either one of them, since the Galra destroyed Allura’s civilization, and the Galra captured and tortured Shiro. And when Keith thought about it, it made sense that he was Galra. When he was fighting Zarkon, he said he fighted like a Galra soldier, his fighting style overall was more violent and aggressive, at the time Keith thought he was just more of a violent guy, but it was actually in his DNA. He has to keep reminding himself that he has always been Galra, it may be the reason why he always felt like an outsider, or that he didn’t fit in. It may explain why he never met his mother, or why his dad disappeared when he was younger. It was the answer to a question Keith has been asking all his life, Who am I? But now he almost wishes he didn’t know. That question is what gave him drive, it’s what pushed him, and now he doesn’t have that anymore.   
    Keith, currently, was avoiding people. He had been all day, after breakfast Keith decided to keep to himself. He trained alone, and whenever he heard any footsteps he hid. He was good at hiding, good at sneaking around. He hadn’t talked to anyone all day, and it was closing in on the time when the rest of the group would be getting to sleep. Before that happens, he did, however, decide to go to Coran to do a blood test. Kolivan said that ‘Galra blood runs through your veins’, so Keith wanted to know what percentage it was. He walked into the med bay and found Coran.  
    “Keith, my boy! Seems I am seeing a lot of you lately. With the dreams, and your stays in the pods and what not. What can I do for you?” Coran smiled. Coran was probably the weirdest of the bunch, which was saying something, yet Keith couldn’t help but like him. He was the crazy uncle that he never had. Coran was like family to everyone, the uncle who was funny but very smart and capable. Coran cared about everyone on the ship, especially Allura.   
    “I was wondering. Could you do a blood test one me? I’d like to know..” Keith trailed off. He was sure Coran knew what he was talking about. Coran’s smile faltered a little bit, but he nodded and started to get out a needle to draw blood.   
    “I have to ask,” Coran said when found the vein on Keith’s right arm and cleaned the area. “Why do you want to know? Why does it matter?”   
    “I just want to know how much is in me.” Keith has been avoiding the word Galra, especially with anyone that has really bad connotations with that word, like Shiro, Allura, and Coran. Coran gently grabs Keith’s arm and slowly pushes the needle in. There is a slight sting, but nothing too painful. A small tube is slowly filled with his blood.   
    “You do know it doesn’t matter.”   
    “But, if it’s a tiny amount maybe that’ll change Allura’s mind and-”  
    “Allura isn’t acting smart, or kind.” Coran sighs through his nose. The tube is filled with blood, and Coran takes it off. He takes the needle out of his arm, and then holds a cotton swab down on it firmly. “She is clouded by her hatred so much so that she cannot see that you are a paladin, you are trustworthy. I’m afraid that it will take her awhile for her to realize this.” Coran places a piece of tape across the cotton. He takes the tube and goes to a computer. “But, if you really want to know, I’ll test it. It’ll take about a day.” Keith nods, and begins to leave, his arm feeling slightly sore. “And Keith, even though you are Galra, I know who you are, and I know who the people that destroyed Altea are. You’re not the same.” Keith looks at the floor for a moment, then offers a small smile to Coran.  
    “Thank you.”   
    “Anytime, now, go get some sleep.” Keith nods at that, and walks out. He will sleep soon enough, but he needed to walk around for a bit. Lance and Coran seem to be the only people who are fine with him being Galra and even supportive. After his conversation with Lance the night before, Keith dwelled a little too much that Lance may actually care about him. Keith always figured that Lance had a keen distaste for him, since Lance was the one that proclaimed the rivalry between them, and whenever the chance arose to yell at Keith Lance took it. Not that Keith didn’t rise to the bait, he always did. But Keith didn’t hate Lance, he even thought that Lance was a fine paladin and a good teammate. Lance was the happiness and the smile that the team needed, and he was a damn good shot. He might not be the most skilled pilot and a terrible flirt, but Lance was smart, he understood how people thought and their actions. Lance had charisma, something Keith was lacking in. Lance knew what Keith was feeling last night, and knew what to say. If Keith ever had to support someone, he’s not so sure he could do it as well as Lance could. And then there was the fact that nobody seemed to dislike Lance. He may annoy people at times, but at the same time it was sort of charming, not that Keith would ever admit to thinking that.   
    Then there was Shiro. Keith knew Shiro the longest out of anyone here, and felt that Shiro was actually a family member to him sometimes. But with this whole Galra thing, what would happen to their relationship? Keith didn’t know what he would do if he didn’t have Shiro to hold him back and to talk to. Just like Allura and Coran, Shiro had a reason to dislike the Galra. But, Keith hoped, Shiro’s tension towards Keith would be temporary. Keith never was too close to Allura, but he it made him nervous to be on her bad side, with no fault of his own. It almost made him mad, especially after seeing Coran and talking to him about it. Yes, Allura has every reason to hate the Galra empire and Zarkon, but should she hate the Galra as a whole race? Ulaz, The Blade, have now proven that there are ‘good’ Galra out there, so how long is she going to carry out this hatred for him and the Blade? He knows there isn’t any use in being mad over it, since it’ll just start a fight between them and the last thing Keith wants is to actually have a fight with Allura.   
Keith kept walking throughout the castle, choosing the same path he usually goes down when he has his late night walks. He let his mind wander to how he’s going to fix everything, and then back to Lance’s words. Give them time. Give yourself time. He goes to Coran’s words. He is not the same as the Galra that destroy worlds. The Blade of Marmora aren’t the same as that. Hopefully Allura will be able to understand that and things will go back to normal. Keith makes the way back to his bedroom, he must’ve spent a good half an hour just roaming the Castle. It was something he did when they first got here, exploring, finding rooms that no one went in. Now he didn’t find himself wanting to explore. He found that soon the hallways and rooms started to blend together, the same white and high ceilings grew boring to him. Sometimes having all the others around him made him feel uncomfortable. He was a loner, that much he knew, so having people around him made him feel contained. Going about the huge castle and reminding himself that he can be alone whenever he wanted helped a bit. He turns the corner that leads him to the hallway with all of their rooms only to find a figure sitting right next to his door. Keith walks a bit closer and the figure perks up and looks at him and-  
It’s Lance.  
He looks a bit tired, he might of been half asleep when Keith found him. Lance slowly stands up, and by the time Keith gets to his door they are standing face to face.   
“You are impossible to find.” Lance says, a little annoyed.  
“I believe you used the term ‘loner ninja,’ once.” Keith smirks at him, and Lance tries to fight back a smile. Lance crosses his arms and looks away, but a smile does flash across his face for a moment. “So, you were looking for me?” Lance looks back at him, and a light flush, probably embarrassment, colors his face.   
“Oh, yeah! Totally, ya know, just, uh… How are you?” Lance scratches at the back of his neck and awkwardly looks at Keith.   
“How am I? That’s why you were looking for me.” Keith deadpans. Keith doesn’t want to think it, but it’s actually a nice thought that Lance actually wanted to know how he is.   
“Uh… Not exactly, but since we are on the topic..”   
“I’m fine, Lance, what do you want?” Lance looks sheepishly at Keith, then glances over him and his eyes land of the tape and cotton that Coran had used. Before Keith can cover it up, Lance points to it.   
“What’s that? What happened?” Keith blinks at him.   
“I just had my blood drawn. Really, why were you waiting for-”  
    “Why did you have your blood drawn?”  
“It really doesn’t matter, seriously, now tell me-”  
    “It does matter! Come on, tell me! Are you sick? Did-”  
“Lance!” Lance snaps his eyes back, shuffles his feet around. Keith stares at him, waiting for Lance to actually start explaining rather than asking questions. After a solid minute, Lance begins to mumble out an explanation.   
“So, I had an idea, and please don’t laugh or say anything.” Lance looked at Keith, and Keith slowly nodded. “Ok, so I was thinking like an hour ago, what happens if we don’t sleep at the same time? When you were gone two days ago, I didn’t have any dreams so I thought maybe that’s a solution. So, I tried it out. I slept for like, thirty minutes and I had the worst nightmare of my life. I don’t understand how that’s even possible, but I didn’t invent dream logic. So, I got to thinking.” Lance looked to Keith’s door for a moment, before returning his gaze to Keith, a soft blush developing on his cheeks. “When I was younger, and my younger siblings or cousins did this to me as well, when I couldn’t sleep, I went to someone else and slept in the same bed as them, and it solved everything! With that logic, you can see why I’m here.” Lance’s cheeks were now a bright red, and Keith was sure he was looking a little pink as well. Keith ignored the part of himself that was fine with what Lance was proposing and decided to fight it.  
“Why didn’t you go to Hunk?” Keith hopes his voice comes out calmer than he feels, but there is a slight crack in it.   
“I don’t want to explain that I’m having your nightmares and that I can’t sleep because of it! He’ll tell Pidge, and then we’ve got a shitshow. Plus, you’re having my nightmares, so I’m thinking it may help you, too.” His voice trails off at the end, and he begins to fiddle with his jacket. Playing with the strings, doing everything to distract himself from Keith’s gaze.   
“You could try to find some medicine that helps you sleep.”  
    “I don’t think that works against druid dream magic, and, again, that would leave you with my dreams.” Keith looks at Lance, trying to put on a face that says, ‘This will never happen,’ but a part of him is getting sick of the nightmares as well, and Lance has been dealing with this a lot longer than Keith has. Lance is basically begging Keith, putting his dignity on the line for some sleep. Keith sighs, giving in. What’s the harm in it?   
“One time. If it doesn’t work, then we will never speak of this again. Do you understand?” Lance quickly nods his head. Keith looks at Lance for one more second before shaking his head and opening his door.   
What the fuck is his life?   
Keith goes to his bed and sits down. He starts to unbuckle his boots. He watches as the door closes behind Lance, and Lance looks around his room. Lance makes his way around the room, picking up the few items that Keith actually kept and examining them. While looking at a chunk of a crystal, Lance begins to talk.  
“So why did you have your blood drawn?” Keith huffs at the question and throws his left boot across the room and begins to take of the right one.   
“I wanted to know the percentage.” Lance looks at him with furrowed eyebrows. “I just wanted to know, nothing more than that.” Lance looks unconvinced, but doesn’t press. He goes back to looking at the crystal. Keith flings his tight boot across the room, landing pretty close to the other one. He takes his socks off, and then takes his belt off. He has slept with a belt on and woken up to marks and sore spots in his skin. Keith takes his pants off as well, usually he prefers to sleep in boxers, however, Lance just so happens to look back at Keith when he does this and he almost drops the crystal. His face explodes in red as he stares at Keith legs.   
“Dude, what the hell! Change somewhere else!” Lance yells, which Keith scoffs at.   
“This is my room.” Lance doesn’t stop flat of staring at his legs, his eyes traveling up and down, which makes Keith feel weird. He takes the sheet and covers his legs, which gets Lance to stop. Keith lays down, and faces away from the room.  
“I’m going to sleep. I guess climb in whenever.” He doesn’t hear Lance respond to that, so Keith just takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. Why did he agree to this? After a minute, Keith can hear a bit of rustling of clothes, probably Lance taking off his jacket. Keith brings his sheet a bit closer to himself, and wills himself to calm down. Why is he so nervous? If it doesn’t work, then it doesn’t work. He tries to logic out the situation, but the nervous knots in his stomach never disappears. He feels a weight get added to his bed, and soon enough Lance is in his bed next to him. Lance grabs the sheet, and then turns himself away. They’re aren’t even touching, leaving a gap in between them, which Keith is both relieved and sad about. In about two minutes Lance is asleep, which is insane. How fast can this guy fall asleep? Keith can hear the calming melody of Lance’s even breaths, and finds himself matching the breaths. The nervous pit in his stomach never leaves, but Keith finds himself drifting off to sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might be a bit rushed, but I wanted to put a chapter out today. I have no idea how I'm going to get another done by Monday, so it'll probably be out on Tuesday, but who knows! I might pull a miracle. School for me actually starts on Tuesday, so yay... Hopefully I'll still be able to post regularly, but please be patient if I don't. Thanks for reading!!! I know I'm not the best writer in the world, yet I really enjoy this. <3333


	12. Rose

Keith wakes up warm, and comfortable. A nice, sleepy haze drifts over him as he shifts in his bed. He hums to himself, still not willing to open his eyes yet. Every limb in his body is glued down to the bed, not willing to move. Keith slowly opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling. He really doesn’t want to move, feeling far too comfortable. When was the last time he actually got a good amount of sleep? Years? Before he left the garrison? As consciousness tugs at him, Keith realizes something. An arm is draped over his waist. A very tan, creamy caramel arm. And then it all comes back, and heat rises to Keith’s face.   
Lance thought that sleeping in the same bed would fix this problem. Keith tries to remember if he had a nightmare but comes up with a blank. He did have a rather sweet dream of a sandy beach, with the smell of the ocean high in the air. It was pleasant, actually, not at all a nightmare. Well, shit. Keith sighs to himself, both hoping that Lance is wrong but right at the same time. His pride hopes that Lance did have a nightmare and that Keith just didn’t this time. It’s such a shitty thing to wish bad on Lance, and Keith feels something pull at his gut, but ignores it. He looks over at Lance, who has both his arms and a leg draped across Keith. The blanket is now crumbled and bunched up on the corner of the bed. Keith tries to subtly shift away from Lance, trying not to wake him, but Lance just shifts closer and holds tighter. Keith groans to himself, and lays there for a minute. This could be worse, this could be worse. Keith looks over at Lance and stares at his face. Usually Lance is very animated and expressive, so it almost seems out of place for him to be so quiet. It’s almost eerie, but at the same time it’s strangely peaceful. Keith will never admit it to anyone, but Lance has a nice face. His eyes always sparkled a bright blue, and even though Lance is sleeping and his eyes are shut, Keith can still imagine the beautiful blue that lights up. Lance had a rather cute pointy nose. It wasn’t comedic how it ended in a point, but it was there. His lips were on the more thin side, but they usually were in a smile, even now there was a hint of a smile of his face. His eyebrows were resting comfortable on his face, not a sign of discomfort anywhere. His hair was a little more curly than it was before, perhaps Lance suffered from bedhead. Looking at his face closely, Keith could see light brown freckles that dot over the bridge of his nose and onto his cheeks. Keith didn’t know that Lance had freckles, and he could feel a small, soft smile pull at his face. No, Keith thought to himself, that’s too weird to smile at Lance sleeping. Keith sighs to himself and returns to the problem at hand, getting this boy off of him.   
Keith didn’t know if Lance was a heavy sleeper or not, but Lance definitely was a cuddler, a small fact that Keith wish he would’ve known before he agreed to this. Hopefully, Keith could get out of this situation without waking Lance up, because that would spring a whole awkward situation for both of them. Keith slowly and carefully picked up Lance’s arm and moves it off his waist. Lance shifts a little in his sleep, his brows furrow for a moment and a small pout goes on his lips, but Lance goes back to sleeping contently after a few seconds. Keith watches intently for any signs that Lance might wake up, not because Lance is cute when he sleeps or anything like that. Keith ignores the wave of cold that rushes in when Lance’s arm is removed. Next, getting Lance’s leg off of him, which might prove more difficult. Keith tries to just nudge the leg off of him, but when that doesn’t work, he tries something else. He sits up and gently grabs Lance’s leg under the knee and slowly lifts the leg off of him. Lance stirs, and Keith immediately stops and prays that Lance will just go back to sleep. Keith watches Lance’s face, while he holds his leg in midair. Lance shifts a little, his face making the same little pout as before, when Lance’s eyes slowly open. Lance looks tiredly at the pillow for a second, when confusion runs across his face and he turns to look at his leg, then Keith’s hand, then looks to Keith.   
Keith pales while Lance just keeps looking at him with confusion, and with every passing second Lance starts to flush darker and darker, and Keith can feel his own face heat up. They continue staring at each other, while Lance’s leg is held midair. The eye contact starts to get uncomfortable, with neither boy speaking up and each just looking into each other’s eyes. Lance really does have expressive eyes, he can’t really hide any emotion with them. It’s like the beach, the shallow part of the ocean. The light blue of the water, the white edges of the waves. The joy and fun that comes out of the beach are all present when looking at Lance’s eyes, but the beach can be dangerous. The light waves can hide a dark secret underneath. Right now, the waves of his eyes show confusion, but something else lies just beneath that wave. Keith decides to break the eye contact, thinking that he may be obsessing a little too much on the color of Lance’s eyes, and also decides to break the silence with conversation. He just needed to start talking, he has to think of something to say that would explain what he’s doing, he had to think of a good conversation starter.   
“Hey.” Nice one, Keith. Keith looks back to Lance, who has the smallest smile on his face, but tries to hide it with faux anger.   
“Keith, what are you doing?” Lance tries to deadpan this, but the smallest hint of amusement leaks into his voice. Maybe Keith could play along with this…  
“Oh, you know. Just hanging out.” Keith puts a little bit of emphasis on the word ‘hanging’ and lifts Lance’s leg up a little bit. Lance chuckles a little bit.  
“No, I think that’s what I’m doing.” Keith lets himself a small smile at that. “No, really, what are you doing?” Keith sighs and moves Lance’s leg back to the bed.  
“You were sleeping, and I wanted to get up and your leg was in the way. I was trying to move it.” Lance raises an eyebrow at this.  
“My leg was in the way?” He lifts up his leg and waves it around, “Well, sorry! I’ll tell my leg to be more considerate next time.” Keith rolls his eyes and turns so his back is leaning up against the wall. He pulls one knee close to himself and swings an arm around it and looks at Lance. The lanky boy has settled back down on the bed- Keith’s bed, mind you- and is now staring up at the ceiling. He has one arm propped up against his head, and the other laying aimlessly on the bed. It’s a weird feeling, having Lance looking so comfortable in Keith’s bed, but Keith rations that it makes sense. All the bedrooms are the same layout, and the beds are all the same, so it’s not like it’s so much of a change for Lance.   
“So, did it work? Is Lance a genius or what?” Lance has a growing smirk on his face as he says this.  
“What are you talking about?” Lance sits up at this and squints his eyes at Keith.  
“Uh, the nightmares? Did you have any? The whole reason I am here right now?” Oh, right. That. “Cause I gotta say, I slept like a baby. Actually, do babies even sleep well? Like, they cry in the middle of the night, and maybe they do have really bad dreams but they just can’t tell us cause they can’t speak. What if all this time-”  
“Lance!” Keith rolled his eyes at his rambling. Morning Lance seems to be even more of a scatter brain than regular Lance. “And to answer your question, no, I can’t remember having a nightmare, but I did have a dream about this beach… So, I guess you were right.” Keith looks away from Lance at this point.  
“Oh, a beach! When I lived in that beach house like a walk away from the ocean, I bet that’s where that’s from. I dreamed about this weird middle aged dude with a texan accent, and we were just hanging out. It was fun.” Keith smiles at that. His dad, what he remembered of him anyway, was really fun and really smart. He gave lots of good advice. Keith didn’t particularly like that Lance had a dream about this, but he knew he couldn’t do anything about it. “So, yeah, I guess I was right.” An uncomfortable silence washes over them when they realize what this means. The only way to get relief from these dreams and nightmares is to sleep in the same bed. Of course it would work out this way, why did karma hate him so much? As the mortification sets in, Keith decides to break the silence.   
“So, as awkward as this is-”  
“You just made it more awkward by admitting it was awkward..” Lance muttered under his breath. Keith pretends he didn’t hear that but glares at Lance nevertheless.   
“- It is something we didn’t know before. It’s progress.” Lance scoffs at this.  
“Yeah, progress at what cost?” Lance sits fully upright and crosses his legs over themselves, turned directly to Keith. “I mean, I don’t know about you, Mullet, but my pride is wounded. And this doesn’t help the situation at all. This isn’t a solution, this is like the medicine. Think about it this way,” Lance looks determined as he talks vividly with his hands, “Think of it like chemo for cancer. It can help, it can solve the problem, or it’s just a treatment to try to lessen the problem. And usually, the chemo brings its own problems with it. This isn’t a solution, nor is it really progress.”  
“I don’t really think your analogy works very well, but I’ll go with it.” Keith sighs, and swings his legs over the bed and stands up. “It’s something we didn’t know before, how about that?” Lance hesitatingly nods at that, and follows Keith’s lead to get out of bed. Instead of simply standing up, Lance makes a show of slowly stretching out every limb in his body, making the whole process unnecessarily slow. He bends his back until it gives a slight crack. Keith rolls his eyes as Lance stands up and easily bends over to place his hands on the ground. He slowly goes back to regular position, and raises his arms as high as they could go. Even though the whole show is to show off, and Keith knows that, he seemingly cannot take his eyes off of him. Lance mostly doesn’t keep eye contact with Keith, but when their eyes do meet, Lance makes a small smile, which Keith frowns at. Yet, his stomach does weird things. Against Keith’s own will, his face flushes in the slightest.   
“Ok, I can agree to that.” Lance straightens out and stands in front of Keith. “So, what do we do now?” Keith blinks at him, not knowing what to say. What do they do now? Keith crosses his arms over his chest, thinking about anything that could solve this problem or make it a little less weird. This whole situation is bullshit, it’s not like they already have enough to worry about. They all miss Earth, they all have this big responsibility to defeat Zarkon and free the universe. And now being thrown into switching dreams with a teammate? It just seemed wrong.   
“I don’t know.” Keith blew out a sigh out of his nose. Lance looked down and kicked at the floor with his foot.   
“Yeah, me neither. This really sucks, doesn’t it? Like, not only did you almost die for me, but now this on top of it all?” Lance puts a lot of emphasis on the word ‘me,’ which rubs Keith the wrong way. In fact, the whole way he said that was off.   
“What do you mean? Of course I almost died for you, I would do it again any second.” Lance looks away at that, a faint pink flush dusting his checks.   
“You don’t mean that-”  
“Yes, I do. You’re my teammate, Lance. You’re a part of Voltron, you’re important.” Lance stays rigid as Keith says this, still looking away, and they stand in a quiet atmosphere for a minute.   
“Yeah, well, I uh..” Lance looks behind Keith at the door, “I gotta get to my own room. Ya know how it is.” And without making eye contact with Keith, Lance swiftly leaves the room and leaves Keith to dwell in his own thoughts. Keith turns to look at the door where Lance just exited, and sighed, dissolving a tension he didn’t know was there. That was strange to say the least, but Keith puts it in the back of his mind for now. And they still don’t know what to do with the fact that they don’t get nightmares from sleeping in the same bed. What would they even do with that information? Would they just sleep in the same bed all the time now or ignore it?   
Keith didn’t know what he wanted to happen, he supposed he would just let things happen and fall into place as they would. Still, a nervous and weird sensation took over him thinking about being close to Lance. Just… sleeping next to each other. Keith was having this feeling a lot, actually. When he woke up this morning, tangled in Lance’s embrace, just thinking about the possibility of that happening again. It was a strange feeling that Keith wasn’t used to. He didn’t have a name for it, but he’s been noticing it and pushing it down for awhile now. And it was always for Lance, or caused by him. Keith looked at the bed and at the indent that Lance had left from sleeping. And then something clicked in Keith’s mind.  
He liked Lance McClain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, I have no excuse why it took me so long to post the next chapter. School, I guess. I just got really busy and I was never in the writing mood. This isn't a valid excuse, and I'm sorry! But, I will try to keep some sort of schedule? I'll try? Might not work out next week because the chapter will either be really long, or I'll cut it up into two chapters (I'm not sure yet) Anyway, thank you for reading!!! And thanks for all the kudos and comments, they really make my day!


	13. Arc en Ciel

          Keith didn’t do romance, he didn’t do crushes. Especially for straight boys, there was no point. What was going on between them, these weird dreams, they must be affecting him. They were in a war, there was no time for pining, there was no time for any of it. Keith really hadn’t ever had crushes since he was young. There was only one time in his life that he openly acknowledged that he had one. He was maybe nine years old and there was this cute, athletic, tall boy from his neighborhood that caught Keith’s attention. Keith became friends with this kid, David was his name. They went together like two peas in a pod, until one day Keith told some people at the orphanage about David, about how much he liked spending time with him and how much Keith liked David’s hair, he had really curly hair as Keith recalled. The kids at the orphanage, who were a few years older than him, called him a weird name and then ran off. After that day, it was never the same. David started avoiding Keith, people whispered about him behind his back. He was an outcast just for liking someone. David was adopted a few weeks after that, but Keith never understood what happened. Looking back on it, of course he knew, but at the time it was so confusing and frustrating for him to go through. And ever since then, he just never accepted when he was attracted to a guy. He kept it deep inside of him, so deep and forgotten that he even forgot that he had that side to him. Though he has heard stories at the Garrison about himself after a party… While in his empty room, he wondered what David was up to now. Probably had a girlfriend, having the time of his life playing football for some college. Maybe David got really smart, is becoming a scientist of sorts, maybe David got into the arts, acting on stage and feeling the spotlight on him. Who knows? David doesn’t have to worry about a space war, David doesn’t know about it, but Keith does. David can have crushes and go on dates, Keith can’t, especially not on his own teammates. Keith takes a shaky sigh. He knows that this will never work out, for a number of reasons. He just needs to get his own dreams back, put Lance a good distance away from him, and focus on this war. Keith sighs.

          Well, he guesses he should get up. He’s spent so long dwelling on his childhood that he’s probably late for breakfast. Keith pulls on his normal everyday clothes, makes sure his hair isn’t too messy, slicking it down where odd strands poke out, and he leaves his room.

          He quietly makes his way towards the dining room, slowly roaming through his thoughts. He’ll need to keep this development out of Voltron, for the teams sake. It’s honestly hurting the team that he and Lance are going through their dreams being switched right now, it would make it so much worse if anyone found out about Keith’s feelings. Keith turns a corner into the next hallway of rooms, coming across Pidge and Hunk making their way to breakfast. Weird, usually he’s so late to breakfast that he never meets anyone in the hall.

          “Hey guys.” Pidge and Hunk look back at him, Hunk gives a warm smile while Pidge studies him. All three of them line up and walk together. 

          “I never thought I’d live to see the day where Keith went to breakfast on time.” Pidge teases him, and Keith scoffs. Is it really that early? It felt late when he woke up, and he took a long time leaving his room. Again, weird. 

          “Yeah, I guess I got pretty decent sleep.” Pidge nods at him. They silently and slowly make their way to breakfast. It’s a rather uncomfortable silence, for some reason that Keith can’t point out. Especially on Hunks end, it feels like the yellow paladin has something on the tip of his tongue but refuses to speak up. Pidge is rather bouncy, there’s a hop in her step, and she openly studies Keith. 

          “So Keith,” Pidge starts, breaking the silence, “You never did answer those questions I asked you a few days ago.” Right, he avoided those questions like the plague. He sighed, it didn’t matter anyway, what was the harm in telling Pidge  _ some  _ of what was going on. “Ok, so, are you having any side effects from being in the pod for that long? Anything besides fatigue and hunger?” How can he word this in a way that doesn’t give Pidge too much?

          “A little I guess. I’ve had pretty weird dreams, but other than that nothing.” Hunk perked up at that. Shit, backtrack  _ backtrack.  _ “Nothing unmanageable, I don’t think it’s from the pod really. Just…. Stuff I’m going through.” Hunk still had a confused look on his face. Did Lance tell Hunk about the druid dreams? Oh God, please no. The embarrassment that Keith would have to go through. 

          “Oh sure.” Pidge slowly went, not realizing Keith’s inner struggle, “Perhaps it’s related to your Galra development.” Keith stiffened a little. Why not bring that up? “Sometimes people can predict the future, in a way, with their dreams. They might feel something is off, call it a sixth sense. Or maybe it was the pod that affected your subconscious! The pods are built for Alteans, not humans, or, in your case, half-humans, so maybe our brains are different. I’d love to run some tests on this. It’s kind of amazing that the Alteans made a machine that boasted healing.” 

          “Right, I wouldn’t be surprised if there was an effect.” Why does everything now have to be in someway tied to his Galra blood? Keith stole a glance at Hunk. He really seemed to want to say something when the word ‘Galra’ entered the conversation. Maybe that was what it’s about. Maybe Lance didn’t tell him about those dreams. Maybe Keith is in the clear. 

          “So, what’s weird about these dreams?” Pidge looked up at him, she’s very interested in this. 

          “They’re just… different, I guess.” 

          “Yeah, but how so?” Pidge kept poking for more information. How did he answer this, he shouldn’t lie to his teammates, and everything that he said so far was some kind of the truth. 

         “Not what I usually dream about. Nothing to dig too much into, just stuff about Earth, mostly.” Pidge hums at that.

          “Maybe the pod made you more connected and attached to your time on Earth? I mean, that’s home for all of us.” Keith looks off to the side at that. He supposes that’s true, he’s spent most of his life there, grew up there, that’s home. Pidge stops talking, too lost in her thoughts to continue, which Keith is glad that she’s done. She’ll probably want more, but right now she probably is sorting through the information he just gave her. Hunk was still stiffly walking  with them, a question still clearly on his mind. Since Keith didn’t really want to explain why he’s Galra, a fact he doesn’t know and it’s what is probably on Hunks mind, Keith kept to himself. He decided to bring up another topic with Hunk instead. 

          “So, Hunk, how’s Lance doing?” Hunk snapped out of whatever daze he was in, and looked at Keith. 

          “What do you mean?” 

          “I mean,” How should he phrase this without giving away too much? “I don’t talk to him that much, and I wanted to know how he was doing with the whole druid thing, and uh..” Keith trails off. Yes, he could of asked Lance himself, but he feels that Lance might’ve told him everything is fine. Hunk knows Lance, and Lance would go to Hunk if he needed to. 

          “Oh, yeah. He’s… dealing with it a lot better than before.” Keith nodded at that. That seemed to be the case after they talked about it, Lance seemed better, but Keith wanted to make sure. 

          “Ok, I just wanted to know that he wasn’t still secretly mad at me for saving his life any more.” Huck scoffs at that.

          “I will never understand that guy. At the Garrison, after you left, there was this one guy that he-”

          “-Oh I remember this!” Pidge quickly cut in and giggled to herself. “Are you sure you want to tell  _ Keith _ that?” Hunk paused at that. What did that even mean? Why shouldn’t Hunk tell him of something that happened when he already left? Keith didn’t get many stories of the Garrison after he left, a lot of people think that he is sour about what happened. Which is true to a point, he supposes. Keith looks to Hunk, who is contemplating telling this story about some guy. 

          “I don’t see the harm in it, Pidge.” Pidge slowly nodded, “I mean, Lance will never talk about it, since he’s so embarrassed to. He’ll have to hear it from us.” Pidge actually laughed out loud at that. 

          “God, do you  _ remember  _ how Lance was after that whole thing went down? He was depressed about it for a few weeks! All he did was mope around the dorm.” Hunk made a small chuckle and nodded along with Pidge. 

          “Yeah, he was pretty bummed out. Ah, anyway.” Hunk turns his attention to Keith, who is so lost in this conversation. “So this guy, I think his name was something like Danny or something, he was kind of short-”

          “-I’d say he’s average” Pidge cut in, looking at Hunk.

          “Fine, average.” Hunk rolled his eyes and continued, “He had like really intense dark blue eyes, they were kind of scary. I remember the first time I saw him, I actually thought he could look into my soul. He had blond hair-”

          “Which I was surprised Lance went for the blonds.” 

          “I wasn’t. The guy was up his alley. Anyway, long story short, about five months after you left, Lance asked this guy out,” Wait, what? “But he used a really bad pickup line, it went like, ‘Do you like Bacon? Do you want to strip?’ It was bad.” 

          “The worst part. The guy was a vegetarian.” Pidge snorted at that. Why would Lance ask a guy out on a date? That made zero sense for the self-proclaimed ladies man. 

          “Anyway, it didn’t work out. At all. Kind of funny what happened. After the failed attempt at asking someone out, he just jumped in a pool. And didn’t come out for two days. He had us bring him food. But no bacon.” Pidge sighs at the memory, while Hunk smiles at it. After a few seconds go by of them reminiscing about the memory, Keith cut in, deciding he needed answers. 

          “Wait,” Keith slowly chimed in, trying not to have his voice filled with hope, “Why would Lance ever asked a guy out?” Hunks smile slowly faded, while Pidge got a confused look. They both looked at Keith. There was a long pause after that.

          “Because he liked the guy?” Pidge said slowly. That didn’t really give him the answer he needed. 

          “But Lance only flirts with girls?” Keith ended that in a question, not really sure. He shouldn’t get his hopes up, he really shouldn’t. But he can feel the butterflies and the anxiety floating up his stomach. 

          “Do you not see how much he flirts with y-”

           “Pidge! And uh..” Hunk stalls for a moment, “Yeah, Lance likes guys and girls. Though he isn’t as open with the guy part of it.” Keith slows down his walking. They’re almost at the dinner table, but man is this something he has to take in. Lance. Has liked guys. This entire time. Lance swings both ways. Keith knows he shouldn’t be happy about this, he knows he shouldn’t feel like he has a chance. But the way his stomach is twisting, the images he starts to have of him and Lance together. Cause it could actually happen. 

          But maybe it shouldn’t happen. It’s a bad idea, with the war and everything. Keith takes a shaky breath, and expels the thoughts out of his mind. It’s not worth it, he tells himself. 

          “Huh.” Is all Keith mutters. Pidge stares at him with a puzzled look on her face. Keith promptly ignores it, and quickens his steps to get to breakfast. God, does he need to eat something.

__________________________________________________________

          Lance quickly rushed back to his room. He didn’t grab his clothes out of Keith’s room, because he’s an idiot. Feeling a little too anxious and hot, he walks fast to get to the privacy of his own space. What the fuck is going on with him? The one time Keith shows a nicer side to Lance, and Lance can’t handle it? He knows the hot head has a soft side, but why does he get so shocked when Keith supports him? It makes sense, they’re teammates, yet Lance can’t help but feel there’s more there. Maybe Lance just  _ wants  _ more there. Not in a weird way, maybe he just wants a good friendship with the red paladin. Yeah, that’s it. That completely explains why he just left Keith’s room so fast. Even with this fast growing friendship they have, Keith doesn’t need to know about Lance’s insecurities. Lance takes a shaky breath as he approaches his room. This all is just far too fast, Lance needs time to think this all through.. Not really a far walk, he quickly stumbled inside. 

          When he was finally by himself, he had space to breath. All the stress escaped him from his shoulders. God, what was up with him these past few days? It’s like he’s anticipating something, but he doesn’t know what. Lance slowly pulled on his clothes, and got out his skincare routine for the morning. Not much, a toner, a moisturizer, and an eye cream. As he went through the process of slathering the creams on his face, soothing himself, he thought about the past month. His life has changed rapidly ever since Keith almost killed himself. He let out a shaky sigh. It was weird to think about that, that Keith actually almost died. He was dealing with it better, he thought, but still it was a little freaky. And then Keith turned out to be Galra, and they switched dreams. Weird how all these Keith related things changed his life so much. He has a new friendship with Shiro, sort of. Before this all happened Lance just followed what Shiro said, and that was all. They really didn’t talk that much outside of missions. And now they have common ground. Hunk and Pidge are still the same, at least that hasn’t changed in his life. Coran told them what was going on with this whole druid situation, and Allura…. He used to be head over heels for her, and now, he can’t help but admit that her reaction to Keith’s Galra development was very unattractive. Hopefully Shiro or Coran can get through to her. 

          He’s definitely seen a different side to Keith. A much more softer side. Keith was supportive of Lance, he listened to Lance talk about his family, and this morning.. Keith’s smile and the way he joked about his leg and the position they were in… It was alien to see Keith like this. Lance knew Keith was a tough cookie to crack, Shiro has informed him of that. Keith’s walls always seemed to be up, yet he can’t help but hope that Keith’s walls are slowly coming down. For him. It was a nice thought. 

          As Lance finished pampering his skin, he realized how dangerous these thoughts were. Lance got attached easily, so maybe he should try  _ not  _ to do that with Keith. Let whatever friendship this is go on its own path. Lance collapsed on his bed, staring up at the ceiling. 

          He also needs to decide what to do about the dreams.

          This morning, after the fiasco with his leg, they both confirmed that sleeping in the same bed helped. So… now what? Is that just what they’re going to do now until this druid magic went away? He’ll have to have that awkward conversation with Keith. Maybe if the nightmares get bad, then they should do that. Over the two weeks that Keith was in the pod, not all of the dreams were nightmares. Just the vast majority of them. The ones that weren’t nightmares were still very weird, yet he always felt a wave of nostalgia whenever they happened. Like last night, it was a memory, a happy one, a feeling of deja vous encased him. Maybe one day Lance could ask what that memory was about. This weird Texas dude, who was so very supportive of him, in the same cabin that apparently Keith lived in for a year. For now, he doesn’t think they’re ready for that. Keith seems very closed off about his past, which was fine, but maybe Lance could one day get Keith to talk about it. 

          Lance lays on his back as he thinks of all this. Slowly the time passes, yet Lance still has things to mull over in his head. To shake Lance out of his thoughts, a quiet yet purposeful knock sounds at his door. Lance jumps from the sudden intrusion from his thoughts. After a second, he gets up and goes to the door. 

          Shiro stands at the other end, holding a plate of food goo. Oh yeah, breakfast. He probably missed it, he didn’t notice the time at all. How late did he wake up in Keith’s bed? He’s never late for breakfast, weird. 

          “I missed breakfast, didn’t I?” Lance grimaces, slumping his shoulders a bit to try to convey that he is truly sad at that. Shiro smiles a little bit, and nods. 

          “Yeah, you did. We didn’t want to disturb you, but I thought I’d just come by and give you the breakfast that you missed out on.” Shiro carefully gave Lance the plate. 

          “Did I miss out in any good gossip?” Lance takes the plate and retreats into his room, sitting down on the bed. Shiro stands awkwardly in the doorway, until Lance invites him in. Why not have a nice talk with Shiro? The door automatically closes behind him, and Shiro puts himself next to Lance- albeit a good foot away- on the bed. 

          “Not much ‘Gossip,’” Shiro wraps the word around air quotes, “But just some plans for the next month. Kolivan was there-”

          “Oh yeah, I forgot he was even staying in the castle.” Lance said. He hasn’t even seen the Galra at all. That guy makes himself elusive. 

          “Yeah, Allura wasn’t too happy about it,” Anger crosses Lances face, but only for a second. Not long enough for Shiro to catch it. The last thing everyone needs is more drama on top of this. Kolivan is clearly trying to help. “Anyway. Allura and I will be working with Kolivan to come up with a plan to successfully attack Zarkon. Until a plan has been drawn, Allura suggested that all of the paladins train and keep focused.” Lancer nodded at that. 

          “How long do you think it’ll take to come up with that plan? We’ll be attacking probably the most dangerous guy in the universe, so it needs to be a damn good plan.” Shiro looked at the floor, obviously calculating something. 

          “I don’t know. I don’t want to rush the plan making stage, I want a solid plan. So, I guess however long it takes to come up with a good one.” He said slowly. Lance nodded at that, it made sense. He didn’t want a half-assed plan that would get them all dead. Lance picked at his food goo on his plate. “Hopefully we can have it done in a few days.” 

          “What was everyone’s reaction?” 

          “Well,” Shiro started, “Pidge started automatically giving ideas for plans. I think she’ll want to be a part of the plan making.” Sounds like Pidge… “And Hunk nodded along, giving his sentiments that he would not like to die.” Shiro nods to himself, as if confirming everything that happened. “Coran… didn’t say much. And uh… Keith seemed a bit more stressed and out of it than usually. I’ll talk to him about what’s troubling him.” Sounds like Keith… Always secretly hiding something and stressing and overthinking. 

          “I swear, that guy just needs some time off. Some time with the ladies,” Lance jokes, even though the thought of Keith with a girl isn’t a too pleasant one for some reason. “He needs a chick just to have fun with.” Shiro chuckles at that.

          “For some reason I don’t think he’d like that.” Lance sets his plate on the other side of his bed so he can talk more with his hands. 

          “Ok, then maybe he needs to party. Take a girl home.. If you know what I mean.” Lance wiggles his eyebrows and nudges Shiro. Shiro smiles at that, but clear confusion runs across the black paladins face. Again, talking about Keith with some girl is weird, but whatever. “He needs to find a way to relax that doesn’t involve training! I say the next planet we go to, we check out the nightlife!” 

          “Again, Lance, I don’t think Keith would enjoy partying with a girl.” Lance rolls his eyes at that.

          “Oh, so Keith is too good for a party? He needs to let loose!” Lance scoffs. “Maybe a dance with Allura, or-”

          “Lance, Keith wouldn’t like that.” There’s something else in his voice. 

          “What do you mean? I know he’s the loner and doesn’t seem like partying type, but maybe we could-”

          “Lance, let’s put it this way. Keith went to some parties at the Garrison, but he never danced with or really even looked at a girl at one of them.” Lance blinked at that.

          “So, what, did he just stand in the corner, or just got drunk alone?” Shiro chuckled to himself and said something under his breath that Lance didn’t catch. 

          “No, he was actually very active at the parties, if he was drunk. If memory serves me correctly.” That made no sense. What did Keith spend his time doing? Dancing by himself? Almost as if Shiro could read his mind, he started in with another story. “Do you know how I met Keith? Did he ever tell you this story?” 

           “He said something like he knew you in high school.” How was this related to Keith at parties. What was the nightlife of the mysterious red paladin?

           “Well, yeah. The very first sentence he said to me was, ‘You are unfairly hot’” Shiro laughed at the memory, while Lance’s mind goes absolutely blank. “I laughed at that the time, and I told him that I didn’t go that way. But I liked him as a person, so I brought him under my wing, so to speak.” Shiro studied Lance’s completely blank expression. After a minute, Shiro spoke up once more. “Keith is gay, Lance, if you didn’t get where I was going.”

          …..Huh. That explains the party thing. Huh… So Keith didn’t dance with girls, he danced with guys….. Huh. So Keith would never be interested in the girls, in fact, when Lance was off with Nyma, wasn’t Keith with Rolo? And that’s why Keith was never into Allura…. This made so much sense, yet so little sense at the same time. 

           “Huh.” Shiro actually laughed out loud. Lance slowly looked at Shiro, who was looking back with a truly amused expression. “So, uhh…” Lance trailed off, honestly not having much to say on the topic. Looking back it’s obvious, but wow Lance had no idea. 

           “I mean, Keith doesn’t really talk about it, and really only showed that side of himself when he at least had three drinks in him. I never heard him talk about a crush at the Garrison.” With Lance’s ever present blank stare, Shiro continues. “.. It’s pretty obvious, Lance. Hunk and Pidge already asked me about it.” Then why didn’t his best friends tell him about this very important detail? The betrayal. 

           “Yeah, yeah. Uh, I think I’ll eat my food goo now.” Shiro nodded, clearly understanding that he should leave now. Shiro got up, making his way to the door. He looked back at Lance, with a small smile. 

          “Don’t be weird about it, Lance.” Lance nodded at that, and Shiro left. How was he  _ not  _ going to be weird about it? 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I literally don't have a reason why I've been gone for like.... 6 months? Wow that's depressing. I got busy? And now that I'm not busy I remembered I still have this to finish, sooooo yah... I'm really sorry for taking a looooong time to come back to this. But I'm here now, and I will finish this fic if it's the last thing I do! I will follow the update schedule, starting now!   
> Also, this chapter is a little under twice as long as the others. So yay me! Let's hope I'll get another chapter out next week!


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